East Coast fever mRNA vaccines – sweetening the promise

The mRNA vaccine platform should help research on East Coast fever subunit vaccines, but it remains unexplored. A theoretical strength of this platform, namely its capacity to prime cytotoxic T lymphocyte responses, is appealing as these, rather than antibodies, are the major mediators of immunity induced by a live parasite-based vaccine. Here, I highlight knowledge on functionally relevant bovine adaptive cellular and antibody immune responses to Theileria parva and antigens targeted by them that could help to assess this vaccine platform, and in the design of a broad-spectrum subunit vaccine. The view that N-glycosylated parasite antigens may exist is unlikely as the pathogen does not encode genomic capacity to catalyze this post-translational modification.