Professor Utpal Pal Leads Multi-institutional Campaign to Understand and Target Tick’s Ability to Harbor and Transmit Bacteria
These images show a black legged tick larva on the left and nymph on the right, both immature stages of a tick's lifecycle.
Image Credit: Utpal Pal, UMD
A team of experts led by Dr. Utpal Pal, a professor in the Department of Veterinary Medicine at the University of Maryland, has been awarded a five-year multi-million dollar grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases to unravel the complex biology of the deer tick, Ixodes scapularis, and its role in transmitting Lyme disease and anaplasmosis, two of the most prevalent tick-borne diseases in the United States.
The grant will support the continuation of work led by Pal that involves a multi-institutional team of researchers who seek to understand and leverage the unique molecular-level interactions between ticks and their hosts to develop potential vaccines and therapeutics for tick-borne diseases.
Pal previously discovered that ticks don’t just passively carry disease-causing bacteria, rather they respond at a molecular level to signals from infected animals they feed on. It was the first discovery of this type of molecular communication system between two very different animals that regulates key biological functions in one species. That work showed when a tick takes a blood meal, specific proteins and hormones in the host’s blood signal to the tick that the host is infected with pathogens, and the tick’s body responds by influencing how it develops, metabolizes meals, fights off microbes, and ultimately, how effectively it can transmit diseases.
The grant will enable researchers from Pal’s lab and his partner institutions--The University of Maryland School of Medicine, Yale University and the University of Minnesota—to focus on understanding the molecular signaling pathways and to develop new, advanced genetic techniques to target key components of these signaling pathways. The research may lead to innovative anti-tick vaccines that can block tick engorgement and pathogen transmission.
According to Pal, “By investigating these novel pathways, we aim to identify new ways to disrupt the tick’s lifecycle and prevent the spread of diseases like Lyme disease and anaplasmosis.”
As part of this initiative, the team will also develop valuable new genetic tools for expanding this research and their findings will be shared through open-source platforms that ensure their discoveries contribute to a broader scientific community and inspire new avenues of research.
“The ultimate goal of our study is twofold,” Pal said, “to deepen our understanding of tick molecular biology and to pave the way for innovative prevention strategies against Lyme disease and anaplasmosis.”
