The University of Aberdeen in the UK has formed a new €6m research partnership to create new and better vaccines for farmed fish.
The international collaboration known as TargetFish brings together some of Europe’s leading biotech and veterinarians together with the university with the aim of commercialising fish vaccines for European fish farming.
Professor Chris Secombes, Chair of Zoology at the University of Aberdeen, is leading Aberdeen’s involvement in the collaboration.
He said: “TargetFish will advance the development of existing - but not sufficient - vaccines as well as new prototype ones which will target socio-economically important viral or bacterial pathogens of Atlantic salmon, rainbow trout, common carp, sea bass, seabream and turbot."
It is also hoped that TargetFish will establish a knowledge and technology base for the development of next generation fish vaccines and greatly enhance targeted disease prevention in European fish farming.
TargetFish is led by Dr Geert Wiegertjes from Wageningen University in The Netherlands and as well as the University of Aberdeen also involves collaborators in Denmark, Germany, Spain, Italy, France, Norway, the Czech Republic, Israel, Estonia and Chile.
The project is funded by the European Commission under the Work Programme 2012 of the 7th Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development of the European Union
Infectious fish diseases are still a huge problem for the aquaculture industry and can severely impact on plans to increase production – in some instances there are still no treatments available.
