Uptick for Lyme vaccine

Commercial interest in Lyme disease has all but ground to a halt since the withdrawal of the first vaccine, Lymerix, more than a decade ago, despite a tenfold increase in the U.S. incidence of the disease. Valneva SE has taken up the mantle with a new hexavalent vaccine designed to work against most forms of the disease worldwide. But the biotech might need to show the compound doesn't need periodic boosting if it wants to bring pharmas back to the table.

Andreas Meinke, VP of preclinical and translational research at Valneva, told BioCentury: "What you need in this indication is a strong antibody response that lasts a very long time and this is exactly the difficulty in developing a vaccine."...