Is There a Lyme Disease Vaccine? Where Things Stand

There is currently no vaccine for Lyme disease in the United States.

The only one ever marketed here, LYMERix, was discontinued by its manufacturer in 2002, which cited too little consumer demand. The protection it gave faded over time, so anyone vaccinated before 2002 is no longer protected.

What's in development

Clinical trials of new Lyme disease vaccines are under way.

• A new vaccine. Valneva and Pfizer have developed a candidate called LB6V (formerly VLA15), which recently completed Phase 3 human trials. It is a multivalent, protein subunit vaccine aimed at outer surface protein A (OspA) of Borrelia, the bacterium that causes Lyme disease, and is designed to protect against both North American and European strains.
• A yearly antibody shot. MassBiologics, part of the University of Massachusetts Medical School, developed a human monoclonal antibody for pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) against Lyme disease. In 2025 it licensed the technology to Tonix Pharmaceuticals, which plans human clinical studies. The approach would give seasonal protection, likely as a single shot people would get each year before exposure to ticks.

What CDC is doing

CDC is researching what concerns health care providers and the public may have about a possible Lyme disease vaccine. If the Food and Drug Administration approves one as safe and effective, CDC will work with the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) to recommend who, and where in the country, would benefit from it, and will share those recommendations with the public and providers.

Further reading

Research on Lyme vaccines and public attitudes cited by CDC includes Comstedt and colleagues (Vaccine, 2015; PLoS One, 2017) on the VLA15 vaccine; Gomes-Solecki and colleagues (Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2020) on protective immunity; Devchand and colleagues (Health Education Research, 2021) and Hook and colleagues (Vaccine, 2021) on consumer and clinician views; Shen, Mead and Beard (Clinical Infectious Diseases, 2011) on public health perspectives; and Wang and colleagues (Journal of Infectious Diseases, 2019) on an antibody that blocked tick transmission in mice.

Sources

• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: "Lyme Disease Vaccine"; a work of the United States government in the public domain.