Eva Sapi Ph.D. is a Professor and Department Chair at the Department of Biology and Environmental Science where she teaches undergraduate and graduate biology courses and carries out Lyme disease research with her graduate students.
Her research interest is to investigate the different forms of Borrelia burgdorferi for the better understanding how Borrelia can hide from the immune system as well as from antimicrobial therapies. Her recent research shows that Borrelia burgdorferi is capable forming a protective layer around itself ? called biofilm ? which could render it to be very resistant to antibiotics and provide a logical explanation as to why extensive antibiotic treatment for patients with a tick-bite history could fail. The goal of her research group is to fully characterize this novel form and to identify novel antibacterial agents that are effective in killing all forms of Borrelia burgdorferi.
Dr. Sapi organized and chaired six Lyme Disease Symposiums at the University of New Haven during the last several years.
