BACKGROUND The Gavac vaccine against the cattle tick Boophilus microplus has proven its efficacy in a large number of controlled and field experiments. However, this vaccine could be further improved by searching for new alternative adjuvants that would induce a stronger long-lasting immune response. We conducted several experiments to assay the adjuvant effect of fractions of the recombinant y...

The southern cattle fever tick, Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus, is no doubt the most economically important ectoparasite of cattle globally. The inappropriate use of chemical acaricides has driven the evolution of resistance in populations of R. (B.) microplus. Anti-tick vaccines represent a technology that can be combined with acaricides in integrated control programs to mitigate the impa...

Development of veterinary subunit vaccines comes with a spectrum challenges, such as the choice adjuvant, antigen delivery vehicle, and optimization dosing strategy. Over years, our laboratory has largely focused on investigating silica vesicles (SVs) for developing effective multiple targets. Rhipicephalus microplus (cattle tick) are known to have high impact cattle health livestock industry i...

In the recent issue ofBMC Biotechnology 20011:2, Manuel Rodriguez Valle, Carlos Montero, Hector Machado and Marisdania Joglar published a paper entitled "The evaluation of yeast derivatives as adjuvant for the immune response to the Bm86 antigen in cattle" [http:/ /www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6750/1/2] .This is the same paper that we prepared with them and submitted in 1998 to Experimental and A...

Bovine babesiosis, also known as cattle fever, is a tick-borne protozoal disease foreign to the United States. It was eradicated by eliminating the vector species, Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) annulatus and Rhipicephalus (Boophilus) microplus, through the efforts of the Cattle Fever Tick Eradication Program (CFTEP), with the exception of a permanent quarantine zone (PQZ) in south Texas along the b...

Babesia bovis is a tick-borne intraerythocytic protozoan responsible for acute disease in cattle which can be controlled by vaccination with attenuated B. bovis strains. Emerging B. bovis transfection technologies may increase the usefulness of these live vaccines. One use of transfected B. bovis parasites may be as a vaccine delivery platform. Previous transfection methods for B. bovis were li...