Alternative methods for tick rearing and infection models

Ticks rely solely on blood as their nutriment during their life. While feeding on an animal, ticks can get infected with a tick-borne pathogen that can cause disease in humans and animals. To study the transmission cycles of pathogens between ticks and vertebrates, researchers primarily rely on laboratory animals. The animals are used to feed the ticks or study the infection dynamics by either infecting the ticks or becoming infected by ticks feeding on them. Our project aims to replace, reduce and refine the use of laboratory animals in tick research. For this, we have three objectives: 1. Optimise the artificial feeding system based on silicone membranes 2. Formulate an alternative food for ticks, without or less based on blood from animals 3. Develop an infection model to study the interactions between ticks and pathogens using the artificial feeding system The artificial feeding method based on silicone membranes has existed for many years. While some successes have been documented, not all ticks feed happily in this system. So far, the system has not been able to replace laboratory animals due to the lower success rates. This is what we aim to improve by, for example, using tick pheromones and other stimuli. Furthermore, the current artificial feeding system relies solely on animal blood. As ticks are pool feeders, they make a hole in the skin and feed on the liquid that pools within this cavity. Due to this feeding behaviour, we hypothesised that we could make an alternative medium that the ticks can feed on, which relies less or not at all on blood. For this, we will use a well-defined medium and add the most important nutrients. This way, we will further reduce the number of laboratory animals required and work on a standardised feeding substrate so that other researchers can easily implement the system within their labs. Lastly, to put everything together, we want to use the system to artificially infect the ticks using this system to investigate what happens within the tick. This will lead to a controlled system in which further research can be conducted to work towards tick-borne disease prevention.