Eight years after the market release of VANGUARD crLyme, a first-of-its-kind vaccine designed to prevent Lyme disease in dogs, the Marconi laboratory in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology of the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Medicine is on the precipice of completing another medical innovation.

Project leaders Richard T. Marconi, Ph.D., and Edward Schuler, Ph.D., are in the final stages of developing new diagnostic tests and a vaccine for leptospirosis. Commonly referred to as “lepto,” leptospirosis is a widespread and potentially deadly zoonotic infection caused by the bacteria Leptospira.

It is spread through contact with urine from an infected animal, most often through contaminated water, soil or food. While dogs, horses, cattle and pigs have the greatest infection risk, the CDC reports that there are nearly 1 million cases of leptospirosis in humans worldwide each year, with nearly 60,000 deaths.