A new one dose tick vaccine may not be far away, thanks to the work of University of Queensland researchers.
Professor Tim Mahony has been spearheading the Meat and Livestock Australia funded research, aimed at delivering the once-per-season dose cattle tick vaccine to producers.
Professor Mahony said he first got involved in the research eight or nine years ago, with it all starting from a project being run by the Polymer CRC.
"There was a cattle tick vaccine that was developed by CSIRO in the 80s and came onto the market in the 1990s," he said.
"It was quite effective but you needed to give the cattle at least two doses and when your main market is the northern beef industry, giving them two doses didn't fit well with their normal on-property routines."
Professor Mahony said the project was important because tick infestations cost northern beef operations more than $150 million in lost production each year.
The new vaccine has been designed to used as a single dose per season, with the goal of improving productivity and even allowing the use of more Bos taurus genetics in northern herds.
"It means producers don't need to change everything they do to actually used the vaccine," Professor Mahony said.
"We did some preliminary tests on sheep... we were able to see quite a strong response in sheep and then three or four years ago we got the funding from MLA to do the cattle trials."
Professor Mahony said researchers then ran a trial monitoring cattle treated with the experimental vaccine over a 14-month period.
"After a year we found they still have a quite high immune response," he said.
"We were able to demonstrate the vaccine provides the same level of efficiency that other people got from two or three doses of the old vaccine," he said.
Observing cattle ticks collected during the trial showed that ticks that fed on vaccinated cattle had their gut linings destroyed by antibodies.
Professor Mahony said he believed the vaccine could be used in conjunction with other tick management strategies, such as the tick fever vaccine.
Researchers have also tested trial animals with a booster dose after 12 months, with it appearing that immunity did improve once again. The next stage will be finding a veterinary pharmaceutical company to commercialise the vaccine and Professor Mahony said there would then need to be more pen trials, followed by field trials.
"I would expect there to be field trials some time in the next three to five years," he said.
