Dr. Yi-Pin Lin receives a new NIH grant for vaccine development

Longtime friends, Yi-Pin Lin and Klemen Strle, receive their third collaborative NIH grant

Dr. Yi-Pin Lin, Associate Professor at the Cummings School for veterinary medicine has received a $4 million dollar award from NIH to study development of a new vaccine against Lyme disease.  Unlike most vaccines in development against Lyme disease, Dr. Lin does not target the outer surface protein A of Borrelia burgdorferi. Instead, he targets a protein called CspZ, that generates a robust immune response. CspZ is thought to work by creating a shield that hides the bacteria from the initial immune response by binding a host protein, Factor H, which inactivates complement, a key factor in early killing of the bacteria.  Dr. Lin and his team have engineered a version of the protein that abolishes Factor H binding and results in the development of a long lasting protective antibody response against the protein.  Dr. Lin is joined in the project by Dr. Klemen Strle, Assistant Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine, with whom he has collaborated with productively since their time at the Wadsworth Center.  Since being recruited to Tufts separately, they have received collaborative NIH awards totalling over $10 million. Read more about the new project here.