Scratching the surface of flea control

A research team at Murdoch University has recently moved another step closer to taking a bite out of the worldwide flea control market, currently worth several US billion dollars per year.

A newly formed local company Paragen Pty Ltd, has been set up by Murdoch University and animal health company VosTech Pty Ltd, to finance the search for a flea vaccine. Prominent parasitologist, Professor Andrew Thompson and molecular geneticist, Dr Wayne Greene will conduct the research work.

We have been hunting for a vaccine based on flea proteins that are not normally exposed to dogs, said Professor Thompson.

When this protein is given to a dog, it will produce antibodies that could potentially kill or stop the breeding cycle of any flea that bites the dog.

Over time, the vaccine will reduce the flea population in the dog?s environment.

Dr Greene said this research was inspired by CSIRO?s success with a cattle tick vaccine that works in a similar way.

But while the tick vaccine took nearly 20 years to produce, the team has made significant headway in just two years, thanks to Dr Greene?s expertise with a new super-fast gene identification technique.

The Directors of Paragen have been impressed with the speed of our progress so far and will invest nearly $800,000 over the next two years, subject to milestones being reached, said Dr Greene.

It is also apt that the inaugural Chair of the Paragen Board is Mal Nairn, who as Deputy Vice-Chancellor over 12 years ago, agreed to support the project with seed funding which in turn helped to attract industry support.

At the moment we have the partial gene sequences of a number of protein candidates that we need to fully characterise. Over the next two years we aim to reach the proof of concept stage for the vaccine and then demonstrate its effectiveness over time.

We are very fortunate. The research team which also includes postdoctoral fellow Dr Marion Macnish, dermatologist Dr Mandy Burrows, immunologists Dr Cassandra James and Emeritus Professor John Penhale, and research assistant Paul Sellers (who grows the fleas on a specially constructed ?artificial dog?) could not work as effectively anywhere else in Australia.

At Murdoch University, we are supported by the world-class State Agricultural Biotechnology Centre, excellent animal facilities and a veterinary school whose clinic sees many cases of flea allergic dogs.

The current work was triggered by the recruitment of Dr Greene by the then Executive Dean, Professor John Yovich (now Murdoch?s Vice Chancellor), thus enabling Greene?s reunion with Professor Thompson.

This mammoth project stemmed from work conducted by Professors Penhale and Thompson with Dr Greene more than 12 years ago.

When we began research on fleas all that time ago, the focus was on finding a way to treat the symptoms of animals allergic to flea bites, said Professor Thompson.

We soon discovered that allergy was not a simple process, and that each dog had a different reaction that required an individual approach, so we have changed tack in the current project.

This initial project provided the foundation for our vaccine work, and indicated the direction for the future.

The team believes the vaccine will be most effective as a complementary control measure to standard flea prevention products. They also hope to identify the key allergens for a diagnostic flea allergy marker to help veterinarians in their battle against dogs? increasing rates of environmental allergies.