Establishing a Cultivable Cell Line of the Tick Dermacentor marginatus

Owing to the changes in the general ecological situation in Russia, livestock losses from ovine anaplasmosis have rapidly increased in recent years. The development of a vaccine against this disease is therefore all the more relevant. A continuous culture of tick cells could be used as an appropriate substrate for producing biomass of the pathogen of ovine anaplasmosis, Anaplasma ovis, for the purpose of manufacturing a cell-cultural inactivated vaccine. Such a continuous cell line of the tick Dermacentor marginatus, the definitive reservoir host of A. ovis, has been obtained by cultivation of homogenized tick eggs on a modified Leibovitz medium L15. The established cell line DM-77 has an undifferentiated phenotype: the cells are rounded, with large nuclei and well-visible nucleoli. By the end of the study, the cell line was passaged eight times and did not express signs of growth rate decrease. The duplication time was 2.8 ± 0.3 days for cultivation in a medium with 10% fetal serum at 32°C.