GCRF-BBR: The Tick Cell Biobank: outposts in Asia, Africa and South America

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Ticks are bloodfeeding arthropods which, as well as causing direct damage to their hosts, transmit many diseases of livestock, companion animals and humans. These diseases are caused by viruses, bacteria, protozoa and filarial worms. While ticks and tick-borne diseases (TBD) occur worldwide, the economic burden they impose falls disproportionately on least-developed and lower-middle-income countries (LMIC) in the tropics and sub-tropics. Losses are incurred through direct costs of tick and TBD control (acaricides, antibiotic and antiparasitic treatment, vaccines where these exist) and indirect costs of reduced productivity, mortality and time and manpower expended on applying control measures. Development of resistance by ticks to existing acaricides is an increasing problem worldwide, and major pharmaceutical companies are unwilling to invest in new chemical tick control approaches for the livestock sector in LMIC. To reduce the economic burden on smallholder farmers and livestock owners in LMIC, new acaricides and/or alternative tick control regimes, and affordable and effective vaccines and/or drug treatments for TBD, are urgently needed.Research into prevention and cure of these diseases is greatly assisted by the use of cell culture systems to study both how tick cells function, and how and why they transmit disease-causing pathogens. Such culture systems, called cell lines, have been developed for many disease-carrying ticks, but they require special skills and much time and patience to establish and maintain. Tick cell lines are increasingly important research tools for study of tick-associated problems affecting LMIC; since they are relatively cheap and easy to grow, they enable many laboratories that lack infrastructure for feeding ticks on large animals to carry out many aspects of tick and TBD research. Seven years ago a central repository, the Tick Cell Biobank, was created in the UK for all the tick cell lines available now and in future. The Tick Cell Biobank distributes tick cell lines on request to research scientists and provides essential training in their maintenance. Currently it is difficult and expensive for LMIC researchers to obtain and maintain existing tick cell lines to support their tick and TBD research, as the cells must be imported from the UK and local training is unavailable. To address this issue and improve LMIC access to tick cell lines and associated expertise, we will establish regional outposts of the Tick Cell Biobank in Malaysia, Kenya and Brazil. The outposts will be sited at institutes with existing tick and/or TBD-related research programmes, in collaboration with experiences local scientists, and will offer a regionally-tailored portfolio of tick cell lines with training in their maintenance. We will also encourage establishment of novel cell lines from indigenous tick species by sharing expertise in the required techniques. We anticipate that the Tick Cell Biobank outposts will enable scientists in these and neighbouring countries to fully exploit the potential of TCL in their research. In the long term, this will build and expand local capacity for tick and TBD research, leading to more and better locally generated solutions for local and regional problems.