Abstract
There is a great interest in the development of new immunomodulators, vaccines, anti-inflammatory, and anti-hemostatic drugs, in addition to markers of exposure for hematophagous vectors based on their salivary proteins. The articles published in this Research Topic highlight several important aspects that can effectively select promising candidates, help understanding vector's physiology and vector-host interactions, as well as the evolutionary mechanisms leading to the insect's adaptation to the blood-feeding behavior.
The articles clearly show the advantage of the "omics" approach that represent state-of-the-art technique in the research of saliva from blood-feeding arthropods, providing catalogues of potential new molecules to be explored in silico and in biological platforms. We hope that more research groups will further invest their effort in this topic, exploring also other hematophagous arthropods trying to understand the natural interaction of vector-host-pathogen in its whole complexity.