Flystrike vaccine endorsed by industry leaders

The flystrike vaccine will be worth the investment, wool industry leaders say. See why it may become a saving grace.

CSIRO vaccine team members Suzie Briscoe, Neil Bagnall and Tony Vuocolo.

Early research into a blowfly-strike vaccine is producing promising signs that the science may be possible, but the work is yet to reveal a commercially viable pathway to produce the vaccine.

However, researchers are urging the wool industry to not lose hope, saying ongoing study could unearth viable vaccines within the decade. And even if the research fails to produce a vaccine, the work retains the support of wool growers.

This comes as growing resistance to fly-prevention chemicals looms over increasingly damaging blowfly seasons.

Now 18 months into the four-year, $2.5 million preliminary research project, a team of researchers with the CSIRO and University of Melbourne, backed by Australian Wool Innovation, have isolated 26 different formulations of vaccine, tested to varying degrees of success.

CSIRO flystrike vaccine leader Tony Vuocolo said while it was a “high-risk project” the vaccine was a priority for AWI.

The idea for the vaccine has long been in the pipeline but started to become a tangible reality in recent years, following the sequencing of the blowfly genome. The vaccine consists of proteins or antigens, found in the blowfly larvae, which reduce growth of the blowfly larvae to limit damage to the sheep.

The challenging part is the replication of those proteins to make an effective and affordable product.

“One way … you need thousands or millions of larvae (for extraction) just to make one or two doses of vaccine which is not commercially viable,” Dr Vuocolo said.

“So, what we’re primarily doing is taking the DNA sequence that codes for that protein and putting it into a cell factory like an insect or bacteria cell so we can produce a lot more of the antigen. Another option is to synthetically make the proteins,” he said.

Dr Vuocolo said a vaccine could be used in combination with fly prevention chemicals to reduce resistance building up.

“The mode of action of this vaccine, if we are successful, it is looking like a once-a-year vaccine,” he said.

WoolProducers Australia president Ed Storey said the vaccine was an important investment as producers were starting to notice growing resistance in their preventative chemicals.

“We very clearly saw that in the eastern half of Australia just this summer,” he said.

“We had a great flystrike threat and saw lots of people using lots of different chemicals and checking sheep two, three times a week to try to minimise the impact, he said.”

Mr Storey said producers were well aware that a “multifaceted approach” was needed to combat flystrike and the industry fully supported the AWI funding for the vaccine research, even if it yielded no results.

“Is it worthwhile to invest in a vaccine? Yes, definitely,” Mr Storey said. “Flystrike is one of the biggest threats to the sheep population. And it may be in the end that research doesn’t yield a vaccine that’s going to be successful, but that doesn’t mean that research is not worth conducting,” he said.