Red mite vaccine research receives funding
The Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC) has awarded funding of £550,000 to the Moredun Research Institute in Scotland, in collaboration with Pfizer Animal Health.
The research grant has been awarded to boost research into the development of a vaccine to protect hens against red mites.
Red mite attacks on hens can cause serious health problems, leading to anaemia, feather-pecking and an increased incidence of cannabilism. Dr Alisdair Nisbet, who is heading the project at Moredun speaks of the growing problems posed by red mites:
"Controlling mite populations is now a major problem, with most pesticides affording only limited or short-lived reduction in the population of mites.
"There is also the issue of development of drug resistance and environmental contamination, which means there is an urgent need to develop alternative control strategies."
The research aims to determine whether laying hens can be vaccinated using specific extracts of the mites, to induce an immune response that will kill the mites when they take a blood meal. Trials have been ongoing at Moredun since 2006, achieving approximately 75% death rate amongst red mites coming into contact with the prototype vaccine, according to Nisbet.
"[This] has been a real positive," says Nisbet "but clearly cultivating red mites for extracts is not appealing, so this new project with Pfizer and BBSRC is designed to be more commercially oriented.
"Our goal is to identify the bits of the mite that will induce the best immune responses in the hens and produce large quantities of these, using recombinant technologies to enable large-scale vaccination trials to take place."
Funding is in place for the next three years, and it is hoped that a new prototype vaccine will be available by the end of this period, which could then be made commercially.
Veterinary practices are being urged to help owners safely dispose of any unused and expired pet medicines - not just antibiotics - during November's Animal Medicines Amnesty. 
