New publication explores the development of effective cattle tick vaccines

STAR IDAZ IRC is delighted to announce the publication of “Questing for sustainable control of cattle ticks: bottlenecks in developing efficacious vaccines,” an Opinion piece in Trends in Parasitology.

Naturally acquired immunity to cattle ticks in certain cattle breeds demonstrates that developing vaccines to prevent tick infestations is feasible. However, important scientific and practical barriers continue to limit progress towards a truly effective vaccine.

The article examines the knowledge needed to guide vaccine development, formulation and testing. It highlights the limitations of existing experimental vaccines and the methods used to evaluate them, identifying several priorities for future research. These include improving antigen-selection strategies, not relying solely on indirect readouts of efficacy but rather elucidating the immune mechanisms responsible for reducing tick loads and overcoming the low coverage of the host’s major histocompatibility complex class II molecules, as well as avoiding confounding factors in designs for testing vaccines and considering management practices that impact efficacy.

The authors also emphasise the importance of using direct measures of vaccine efficacy, avoiding confounding factors in vaccine trials and considering how livestock-management practices may affect vaccine performance.

The article is authored by Isabel K.F. de Miranda Santos, Johannes Charlier, Vish Nene, Gary Entrican, Latifa Elhachimi, Bruno Goddeeris and Cynthia Baldwin.

Read the article: https://www.cell.com/trends/parasitology/fulltext/S1471-4922(26)00233-3