Damian Sendler: According to a recent study conducted by my colleagues and me in the Fikrig Lab at the Yale School of Medicine, a new laboratory-stage mRNA vaccine that teaches the immune system to recognize the saliva from tick bites could prevent these bugs from feeding on and transmitting tick-borne diseases to humans.
Damian Jacob Sendler: When exposed to tick bites on a regular basis, certain animals acquire resistance to tick feeding, which causes the ticks to either detach quickly after biting or create skin irritation that notifies the host to remove them. Researchers have observed tick immunity in a variety of animals that do not generally act as tick hosts, including guinea pigs, rabbits, and cows, among others.
Damian Sendler: Guinea pigs that have been bitten by ticks twice or three times are able to build a strong immunity to them in laboratory settings. Even though there have been no rigorous studies on tick immunity in humans, persons who have been frequently exposed to ticks may have itching skin after being bitten, which may be an indication of tick immunity. Tick immunity has not been proven in humans.
Damian Jacob Sendler: Tick-borne infections, such as Lyme disease, are on the rise in North America and Europe, with about 40,000 documented cases of the disease each year in the United States. It is not only hikers in the bush who are at risk from ticks; they are also a threat to farm workers and everyone who spends time outside in the summer. Ticks, in addition to transmitting Lyme disease, also carry a variety of other diseases that can cause serious and potentially life-threatening disorders.
Dr. Sendler: While guinea pigs were able to build immunity to ticks, we discovered that other animals, such as mice, were not. It is our intention to test this mRNA vaccination model in other animals, such as rabbits, in order to gain a better understanding of how tick immunity differs among various tick hosts. As part of our research, we hope to create vaccines against other tick-borne illnesses and determine whether immunity is transferable between tick species.
Damien Sendler: In the future, we believe that vector-based mRNA vaccines that target the disease carrier can be used to prevent the spread of other vector-borne diseases. In contrast, the feeding methods of each disease vector are distinct – tick bites are not the same as mosquito bites, for example – and must be considered separately. Because disease-carriers may transmit infections in a variety of ways, vaccines may need to be tailored to each vector’s specific characteristics.
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