Episode
Why Babesia Goes Undiagnosed: The Research, the Treatment Gap & What's Coming | Dr. Geoff Dow, 60 Degrees Pharmaceuticals
- Podcast
- The Lyme+ Podcast
- Published
- Mar 19, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1942
- Processing state
not_requested
Actions
POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/the-lyme-podcast-7049299/episodes/why-babesia-goes-undiagnosed-the-research-the-treatment-gap-what-s-coming-dr-geoff-dow-60-degrees-pharmaceuticals/transcription-requests
Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode.GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/the-lyme-podcast-7049299/why-babesia-goes-undiagnosed-the-research-the-treatment-gap-what-s-coming-dr-geoff-dow-60-degrees-pharmaceuticals.md
Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource.
Summary
Babesia is hiding in plain sight, and the data gap is bigger than most people realize. In this episode of the Lyme+ Podcast, host Kenzie Vath sits down with Dr. Geoff Dow, PhD, Founder and CEO of 60 Degrees Pharmaceuticals, for a conversation that starts personal and gets deeply scientific. Dr. Dow's own entry into the Lyme world came through his wife's diagnosis in Marin County, California, a region that doesn't appear on official Lyme maps. That experience shaped everything: the importance of acting on caution, not waiting for a perfect diagnosis, and the very real consequences of data gaps in tick-borne illness. The official case count for Babesiosis sits at 2,000 to 3,000 per year. 60 Degrees' own claims analysis suggests the real number is at least 25,000, and that's still likely an undercount, given how little awareness exists around the disease. Dr. Dow breaks down why the numbers are so distorted, what it takes to actually define a case without reliable diagnostics, and why the blood bank screening assay (roughly 1,000 times more sensitive than anything commercially available to physicians) represents one of the starkest diagnostic gaps in modern medicine. This is one of the most grounded, science-forward conversations we've had on the podcast, and one of the most urgent. 🔬 WHAT WE COVER: Dr. Dow's personal entry point into Lyme and tick-borne illness research How tafenoquine (ARAKODA®) targets Babesia at the cellular level Why official Babesiosis case counts are a fraction of the real burden The three active clinical trials 60 Degrees is running and the FDA timeline Why diagnostics are the foundational problem that has to be solved first The long COVID parallel and what it means for chronic illness legitimacy Why 60 Degrees is often the only pharma company at…