Oral vaccination with an attenuated Salmonella typhimurium strain expressing Borrelia burgdorferi OspA prevents murine Lyme borreliosis

Borrelia burgdorferi is the causative agent of Lyme disease. In the mouse model, protection is correlated with the development of antibodies to a major outer surface protein, OspA. In this study, we expressed OspA in an attenuated strain of Salmonella typhimurium and tested the efficacy of the transformed strain in protecting against disease. We show that mice inoculated by gavage developed high titers of anti-OspA antibodies and were protected against an intradermal challenge with the spirochete.