Roadmap for the development of control strategies for liver fluke

What are we trying to achieve and why? What is the problem we are trying to solve?

Can we improve the quantitative understanding of acquired immunity against F. hepatica in sheep and cattle in order to understand demographic influences on infection, support vaccine development, and incorporate this in mathematical models of parasite epidemiology?

What are the scientific and technological challenges (knowledge gaps needing to be addressed)?

Understanding of immune responses to fluke infection is rudimentary and derived mainly from vaccine trials. There is a need to renew focus on the fundamental immune processes in actively infected animals, how fluke avoid and/or manipulate them, and whether strategies are available to target fluke defences.

What approaches could/should be taken to address the research question?

• Development and availability of multiplex and NGS technologies to define regions of the host genome relevant to immune responses.
• Experimental studies into host responses to infection.

What else needs to be done before we can solve this need?

Immunological tools for ruminants are currently limited.

Existing knowledge including successes and failures

Recent work has focused mainly on why protection levels from candidate vaccines is so variable, and the role of the host response in generating this variability. Other work made significant advances in understanding fluke immune avoidance and manipulation. Integration of existing knowledge into a holistic understanding of host-fluke immune interactions and new work to test this is the logical next step.