Roadmap for the development of candidate vaccines for liver fluke

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

Identify what the host is responding to and its role in protection or possibly as a decoy dominant antigen which is preventing resistance developing

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

• Establish the protective mechanisms required to kill juvenile and adult flukes
• Use NGS and bioinformatic tools to map the pathways up- and down-regulated following infection
• As animals do not become immon-protective une to re-infection, these must be n

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

• Establish the dynamics of host immune responses under field conditions.
• Study the response of “Resistant” animals compared to those that are highly susceptible
• Transfer studies to establish the role of antibody and immune cell populations
• Studies on the immune responses of naturally exposed animals to establish the direction of immunomodulation
• NGS studies of local and systemic immune responses in target species
• NGS studies of animals after protective-vaccination

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

We are ready now to address these steps

Existing knowledge including successes and failures

There are recent publications on the ovine systemic and hepatic responses to infection