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Autor fotografie: André Karwath

SAS scientists are developing the anti-tick vaccine

17. 8. 2016 | 771 visits
International project ANTIDotE, with participation of the Slovak scientists, set up an ambitious goal. Project consortium wants to find the candidates for a vaccine against ticks. The vaccine should avoid the transmission of pathogens that are carried by ticks and protect the body against tick-borne encephalitis, borealis and babesiosis.
When a tick latches on to us, most of us will not even notice. It's because of the substances in their salivary glands. Substances eliminate all the processes, which normally prevents the body against parasites and creates a comfortable zone for the tick. But viruses and bacteria may benefit from this situation as well and they can shift further into the body unnoticed. Scientists are now trying to identify the specific substances that are used by tick to prepare a vaccine against them. The immune system will be not suppressed then and it will be able to handle the viruses and bacteria by itself.
Slovak group of scientists from the Institute of Virology BMC SAS are currently in the stage when they are comparing the ticks that are infected by the encephalitis virus and those who are not, through the method of gene regulation analysis. "For this analysis we need a large number of tick-borne RNA. It was therefore necessary to prepare thousands of tick nymphs in the laboratory colony and then individually infected them, "explains the lead scientist of the project RNDr. Boris Klempa, DrSc.
The final step of the project should be test of the vaccine effectiveness on the animal level, but according to scientists the analysis itself will already provide the important information for the fundamental research. "By identifying which genes are starting at which point, we will get the information about the processes that take place during tick blood sucking, which is an important physiological process in the life of tick and tick-borne encephalitis," says Boris Klempa.