Gundersen works to improve Lyme test and vaccine

La Crosse Tribune
By TERRY RINDFLEISCH La Crosse Tribune

Gundersen Lutheran researchers said they still are working on a better test for Lyme disease, along with a safer vaccine to protect humans against the tick-borne illness.

The prevalence of the disease in the La Crosse area led Gundersen Lutheran staff to begin studying the disease more than 20 years ago.

That research continues at the Health Science Center in La Crosse, even after helping to test a vaccine and develop a Lyme test, because "we find the incidence of Lyme

even greater and causing significant illness," said Steve Callister, senior research scientist and director of the Gundersen Lutheran Microbiology Research Laboratory.

"We've progressed on our research and the complexity of what we're doing," Callister said.

Dean Jobe, supervisor of the Gundersen Lutheran Microbiology Research Laboratory, said he and others are trying to improve Lyme testing and a vaccine for humans.

He said Gundersen Lutheran researchers also are working with Schering-Plough to develop a better version of its Lyme vaccine for dogs.

Gundersen Lutheran was a major test site for a human Lyme vaccine developed by Connaught Laboratories. In La Crosse, 1,299 people at risk for the disease received the vaccine, but it never wound up on the market. Another Lyme vaccine was pulled due to poor sales.

"There has been no new development to put a human vaccine on the market," Jobe said.

Callister and Ronald Schell, a University of Wisconsin-Madison researcher, started working on Lyme projects in 1984, and that led to the Gundersen Lyme Test.