EU project to find vaccine against ticks
European Union-funded researchers are launching a five-year project to find a vaccine against ticks to prevent them transmitting the diseases they carry to people they bite. The €3 million project is funded under the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development (FP7). The ultimate aim is to cut the incidence of diseases that affect thousands of people each year in Europe.
The bite of the tick Ixodes ricinus can cause Lyme disease, tick-borne encephalitis (TBE) and human babesiosis - all serious diseases that are more and more frequently encountered in Europe. According to a report by the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) published last year, the number of TBE cases ranged in the past decade from 1900 to 2630 cases a year, with most cases occurring between July and October. Countries in Central Europe and around the Baltic Sea are particularly affected.
Rather than trying to develop vaccines for the individual diseases, the consortium, led by the Academic Medical Centre at the University of Amsterdam, will investigate a vaccine directed against the tick. Thus, a single vaccine could prevent transmission of multiple human pathogens from the tick to the host.
"Our aim is to deliver a 'proof of concept' in animal models with a clear idea of how we will proceed from there to a human vaccine," said Joppe Hovius of AMC. "In addition, our research will give us much more insight into the molecular mechanisms behind transmission of these pathogens."
The project is named ANTIDotE – ANti-tick vaccines to prevent TIck-borne Diseases in Europe – and will start in December 2013. The consortium consists of European experts in the field of Lyme disease, TBE, babesiosis and vaccinology. The researchers will investigate ways to interfere with the transmission of tick-borne pathogens from ticks to their hosts as well as ways to interfere with tick feeding.
Other news from the department science
