Firms form aqua pharma company to fast track disease prevention
A new aquaculture pharmaceutical company, Aquatreck Animal Health, has been formed by Irish “R&D amplifier platform” Marrinovac and Spanish company CZ Vaccines.
Professor Patrick Smith, chairman of Dublin-based Marrinovac and a scientific advisor to the European Medicines Agency, said: “The mission of Aquatrek is to fast track innovative fish and shrimp disease prevention strategies by building effective open collaboration alliances of top talented teams to serve the global aquaculture industry’s sustainable future.”
Diagnostic services
In a press release, Spain-based Aquatreck said it aims to support global aquaculture development providing autogenous, experimental and licensed vaccines and novel, innovative, reliable, accurate diagnostic services for the fish and shrimp farming industry. This will include salmon farming.
Andrés Fernández Álvarez-Santullano, chief executive of CZ Vaccines SA, said: “We have long experience as CMO GMP (contract manufacturing organization good manufacturing practices) producers of fish vaccines for the last 25 years and we decided to focus to accelerate the sustainable global aquaculture growth by preventing the major fish and shrimp diseases so we launch today Aaquatreck, a new dynamic open innovation aquatic health company.”
Close collaboration
Dr Panos Christofilogiannis, who has a PhD in antibiotic use in Mediterranean mariculture from Stirling University, is a director of Aquatreck.
He told Fish Farming Expert Aquatreck was developing health management solutions for salmonids as well as fish such as tilapia and marine species.
“Aquatreck aims to provide autogenous, experimental and licensed vaccines for Atlantic salmon and provides an Aquanosis QPCR and ELISA surveillance diagnostic programme for the main known Atlantic salmon viral pathogens,” said the director.
New generation vaccines
He added: “The salmon industry requires new generation vaccines that are more efficacious and are developed with improved knowledge on pathogen virulence and novel adjuvants. The introduction of cleaner fish is changing the epidemiology of the farms and we are ready to develop autogenous and experimental vaccines for these fast-growing new species.
“Our lab in Cambridge has long experience in the production of autogenous, experimental VNN-VER viral vaccines that are relevant for halibut and cod and is doing applied research on novel Atlantic salmon pathogens like salmon gill poxvirus (SGPV), infectious spleen and kidney necrosis virus (ISKNV), Atlantic salmon calicivirus - (ASPV), piscine myocarditis virus (PMCV).
“Our research team in Dortmund Germany is developing an exciting pipeline of subunit vaccine candidates against infectious pancreas necrosis virus (IPNV), viral heamorrhagic septicaemia (VHS) and salmonid alphavirus (SAV) and is testing subunit vaccines against icthyopthirius multifilis [the ectoparasite that causes white spot disease], lepeophtheirus salmonis [sea lice] and philasterides dicentrarchi [a parasite that can cause a fatal disease in sea bass] under the auspices of the PARAFISHCONTROL EU H2020 Research project (www.parafishcontrol.com).
