TP-05: A Novel, Oral, Non-Vaccine Therapeutic for the Prevention of Lyme Disease.

“We are pleased that the FDA has accepted the IND for TP-05, which is an important milestone in our pipeline development. Currently, there are no approved pharmacological prophylactic options for tick kill and preventing transmission of Lyme disease, which has the potential to cause severe, often debilitating symptoms with permanent and irreversible damage,” said Bobak Azamian, M.D., Ph.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of Tarsus. “There is a significant unmet need for a therapeutic to quickly and reliably prevent this disease that can lead to poor outcomes for so many people. We look forward to initiating our clinical development program for TP-05 and advancing the path for this much-needed therapeutic for Lyme disease prevention.”

Lotilaner is what I give to my dog for monthly flea and tick protection. (The brand name for dogs is Credelio.) It kills ticks within 8 hours, which unfortunately isn't fast enough to prevent transmission of Borrelia and many of the other co-infections (despite the myths one hears repeated often during tick season). Perhaps the dosage for humans will be stronger. Because it affects GABA receptors, it does cause seizures and other adverse neurological effects in dogs occasionally, so I will be very interested to hear how this trial goes for humans. I'm not eager to take this stuff, and am looking for something else to give to my dog, honestly.

its an interesting development

and its good that they are looking at more ways of addressing the lyme disease issue.

but personally i am a little wary of any pharma drug that you take long term to prevent a condition - as ultimately they all have long term consequences that are rarely made clear - or even known.

the top level story will be that the drug targets an enzyme or other molecule that is restricted to arthropods and humans do not have that target - so its safe.

but as we have seen with many other pharma drugs this is a partial truth used to market the products.

it may be true that the drug targets an enzyme or other molecule that human's do not have - but ALL pharma drugs also have what are called "off target effects" - where the drug effects molecules other than the targeted one and results of this can be :
1, known but relatively harmless
2, known but far from harmless
3, unknown and potentially very harmful long term

in reality - many off target effects typically only come to light much later - often only after a drug has been in use in large numbers of people for decades.

what's happening here is that the financial imperative is forcing marketable pharma products through the pipeline and into market as fast as possible to recoup huge R&D investment - while money to prove harm or even investigate risks from an unbiased public interest perspective is absent or simply dwarfed by comparison.

its actually a problem with the philosophy of modern society becoming detached from true and just natural principles.
We allow corporations to collect disproportionate profits by outsourcing the true cost of their products, the human suffering, loss of earnings, early death, and the environment pollution, etc to the general public and society at large, presumably because the governments see economic growth as the key performance indicator - and re-election criteria.

as an example - here is a paper demonstrating increased heart disease risk in humans associated with exposure to a similar insecticide used widely on pets and gardens and also supposedly harmless.
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamainternalmedicine/article-abstract/2757789?

as a result I would be very cautious about exposing myself to any such new systemic pesticide.

yep - also not intending to be a downer - (sorry Rainy) - just think we need to have the potential benefits in the context of or considered alongside teh potential harms - you know the Risk / Benefit equation