It was about 20 years ago.   We had a terrible scare.

My son (the youngest of the bunch) was “mustering” for his Civil War platoon.  The kids, ranging in age from 8 to 10, were learning about Alexandria’s (VA) activities in the war.  (You should know that it was a Federal bastion, with a slew of forts around the periphery to protect against Confederate encroachment.  And, you do recall that the District of Columbia originally was comprised of 5 square miles separated from Maryland and 5 square miles from Virginia; this town was at one time known as Alexandria, DC.)

In any event, my ex-wife and I noticed that one side of Daniel’s face was drooping. And, we took immediate (and bickering) action. It was clear that Daniel was manifesting Bell’s Palsy, thanks to a tick bite.  (The Fort Ward Park, where they’d been playing, for a week was a fairly overgrown, wooded area.)

The good thing is that the quick action taken helped Daniel recover within a week.  Which was great, since he was about to take a cruise in Alaska….

But, ticks are a problem- not just in the manifestation of Bell’s Palsy, but in the far more common Lyme disease.  About 40,000 cases develop each year- with a total of some 1.5 million sufferers- and then there’s all those other tick-borne diseases.  They occur because the ticks find ways to hide in a subject’s skin and transmit pathogens to their host- without out noticing they’ve become anchored to our bodies.

The fact that they are hard to see or feel (until it’s too late) is the problem.

So, it’s great that Dr. Erol Fikrig (Yale) headed up this team of scientists from Yale and the University of Pennsylvania (with one researcher from Maryland) who have outlined (in Science Translational Medicine) a potential vaccine against ticks.  It’s hoped this will preclude the manifestation of Lyme disease and other tick-related illnesses.

And, I bet you aren’t surprised that this vaccine is based upon mRNA technology, either.  (This 10 year development journey took a big leap once mRNA technology became the prime vehicle.) The delivery activates our antibodies against tick saliva, which then causes a rash and/or red blotches to appear.  Fikrig et al encoded it for the mRNA that produces 19 proteins in tick saliva.  The mRNA is then encapsulated in a liquid nanoparticle.  (Just like the Moderna or BioNTech vaccines.)

By choosing to make the vaccine against the tick and not the disease, the protection is against all tick-borne diseases- even the ones that we have not yet recognized.

When a guinea pig (isn’t that just perfect?) is vaccinated (three times over a four week period), the data demonstrates that ticks drop off very quickly and the red splotches appear within hours of a bite. Moreover, the ticks weren’t able to suck as much blood. (The ticks were fed poorly).

It’s thought that we (humans, that is) would recognize the reaction and be more diligent is removing the tick(s) from our bodies, should they not simply fall off.  That precludes the development of the tick-borne disease.

But, it’s not clear whether we humans develop tick immunity in the same fashion as guinea pigs.

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