Vaccinomics approach to tick vaccine development

Abstract

Ticks are blood-feeding arthropod ectoparasites that transmit disease-causing pathogens to humans and animals worldwide. Vaccines using tick antigens have proven to be cost-effective and environmental friendly for the control of vector infestations and pathogen infection and transmission. However, new strategies are needed to identify tick protective antigens for development of improved vaccines. These strategies will be greatly enhanced by vaccinomics approaches starting from the study of tick–host–pathogen molecular interactions and ending in the characterization and validation of vaccine formulations. The discovery of tick antigens that affect both tick infestations and pathogen infection/transmission could be used for vaccines targeting human and animal populations at risk and reservoir species to reduce host exposure to ticks while reducing the number of infected ticks and their vector capacity for pathogens that affect human and animal health. In this chapter, we describe methods of the vaccinomics platform using transcriptomics and proteomics for the identification of candidate protective antigens in Ixodes scapularis, the vector for human and animal granulocytic anaplasmosis, tick-borne encephalitis, and Lyme disease.