Timothy Haystead, PhD, professor of pharmacology and cancer biology, has been honored with the inaugural Neil L. Spector, MD, Legacy Award for Transformational Lyme and Tick-Borne Disease Research, from the Bay Area Lyme Foundation.
The award is the foundation’s highest scientific honor, recognizing bold, rigorous, translational research that moves patients closer to answers.
Haystead was honored for his research applying precision oncology techniques to Lyme disease. Using a technique developed for targeting tumors, his team deployed an HtpG inhibitor carrying a photosensitive drug that is absorbed by Lyme bacteria and, when activated by light, disrupts their cellular structure and kills them. Subsequently, he has developed novel molecules that can detect the bacteria by PET imaging in vivo.
“Past support from Bay Area, the Steven and Alexandra Cohen foundation, the Younger family foundation, Matt Croughan, and the DOD have made this achievement possible. We are now ready to move to clinical studies following an investigational new drug campaign,” Haystead said. "Our next challenge is to raise funding to support this clinical effort.”
“I am very grateful to all that have supported the work to date. I am especially proud of all the folks in my lab past and present that have been directly involved in the program - particularly the chemists and nuclear medicine team!”
Spector was one of the country's leading oncologists, a researcher at Duke University School of Medicine, and a Lyme disease patient. By the time his disease was diagnosed, it had damaged his heart beyond repair, requiring a heart transplant in 2009. He redirected his research to apply precision oncology techniques to Lyme disease.
After Spector passed away in 2020, Haystead continued this work.
The honor was presented May 28 by Denise Spector, PhD, MPH, ARNP, retired oncology nurse practitioner and integrative medicine clinician, and Spector’s wife.