The private/public consortium will soon make available biotechnological products aimed at the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of diseases that currently cause great losses to both national and international salmon producers.
ICTIO BIOTECHNOLOGIES will launch, starting this second semester and throughout 2019 and 2020, last-generation sustainable products and services for the prevention and control of aquaculture diseases, that could transform the Chilean salmon industry. By ends of September 2018, this plan already showed its first results on the international level. (See note)
The Chilean private/public consortium was founded four years ago. Its goal was to develop top scientific research into the serious sanitary problems of aquaculture, that lead to enormous losses, especially for the national salmon industry, hindering its competitivity in international markets.
Since 2014, ICTIO BIOTECHNOLOGIES has been contributing high level knowledge thanks to the scientific work developed by the Aquaculture Biotechnology Center (CBA) of Universidad de Santiago de Chile, together with the efforts of the salmon producers Salmones Blumar S.A. and Productos del Mar Ventisqueros S.A, and the biotechnology company ActivaQ S.A. Public contribution to the consortium also includes the financial support of Corfo.
Currently, ICTIO has nine teams of first level Chilean scientists working nine different projects in the areas of prevention, diagnosis and treatment of the most common diseases caused by pathogens attacking farmed salmon in the South of Chile. These lead to great losses every year.
The current projects are: Application of prolonged antigens and coadjuvants liberation systems that boost the immune response to vaccines in salmonids; Caligus Control based on new antiparasitics; Development of stress markers to determine susceptibility to diseases in salmonids; Identification and follow-up of emergent and reemergent pathogens; Evaluation of the immunity level induced by vaccines or by specific pathogens that affect the salmonid population; Evaluation of the cellular immunity level of salmonids; Generation of efficient and effective vaccines for the prevention of pathogen-provoked septicemia and pancreatitis in salmon; Use of probiotics for the prevention of viral and bacterial diseases in aquaculture species; and Generation of alternative passive immunization against intracellular P. salmonis.
Three projects are in the prototype phase and about to enter the market: 1) Immune Track, a service designed to evaluate the quantitative changes of the innate (C3, IFN-α and IFN-γ) and adaptive (CD4, CD8, IFN-γ, IL-10 and TGF-β) main markers and cytokines of the immune system after different treatments or vaccinations; 2) Kit Plus for viruses and bacteria multiple detection; and 3) OxiTrack, a service created especially for the evaluation of fish’s response to conditions provoking oxidative stress.