Features
Vaccine for Poultry Mites?
by Dr John Huntley
From the extensive experience gained from working with the sheep scab mites, a major new avenue for Moredun has been opened through Defra funding on the poultry red mite. This work, which is in collaboration with the Avian Science Research Centre (SAC), is aimed to develop a vaccine to this parasite which is a major problem in the poultry industry. The red mites bite and feed on the blood of hens during darkness, but in daylight hide in the crevasses and crannies of the hen house. The mites cause anaemia, loss of egg laying, feather loss and pecking disorders, and mites are now becoming resistant to many of the chemicals used for control.
Preliminary work at Moredun has indicated that the mite gut membrane proteins are a likely target for the vaccine, so that antibodies in the blood of vaccinated animals will attack and prevent the mite from feeding properly. A similar approach has been successfully employed for the only commercial ectoparasite vaccine on the market to date, and is against the cattle tick which is also an obligate blood feeder. A major advance in our work has been the development of a technique to maintain these red mites in the laboratory, which feed on fresh blood supplied regularly. This technique will enable us to rapidly home in on the relevant ‘anti-gut’ antibodies for vaccine development, without the need (as for the sheep scab studies) for lengthy and expensive animal trials.