Development of a novel sea louse vaccine: an environmentally friendly tool for increasing sustainability of protein production in UK salmon aquaculture
Sea lice are draining £30 million a year from the UK salmon farming industry—and they are becoming resistant to the medicines used to control them. These parasitic crustaceans attach to salmon in sea pens, causing the single largest economic and welfare problem for global salmon aquaculture. The UK produces 150,000 tonnes of salmon annually, worth over £1 billion in retail sales, so the threat is substantial. This project aims to develop a vaccine that would give salmon lasting immunity against sea lice, replacing chemical treatments with an environmentally friendly alternative. The research team will use genome-mining, high-throughput sequencing, and protein mass spectrometry to identify which proteins the parasite uses to suppress the salmon’s immune system, and then test those proteins as vaccine targets. If successful, the vaccine would reduce the need for medicines, slow the spread of drug resistance, and make salmon farming more sustainable. For consumers, this could mean a more reliable supply of affordable, high-quality farmed salmon. For the UK aquaculture industry, it would protect a billion-pound sector from a growing biological threat.
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UK Atlantic salmon aquaculture produces 150,000 tonnes of fish per year, with high quality food products valued at more than £1 billion in retail sales. Sea lice, parasitic crustaceans infecting salmon in the sea, are a key constraint to the sustainability of farmed salmon protein production, costing UK industry more than £30 million per year to control. Sea louse infections provide the single largest economic and welfare problem for UK and global salmon aquaculture. While good control of sea louse numbers has been achieved over the last 10 yrs by the use of medicines, recently the development of parasite resistance to control is posing a major threat to the sustainability of the UK and global aquaculture industry. Therefore in this project, a multidisciplinary and multisectoral research team will attempt to develop a novel vaccine capable of providing effective, eco-friendly control of sea lice infections in farmed salmon. The research consortium will build on their extensive experience in the field to generate new knowledge concerning the mechanisms by which the immune systems of salmon fight sea louse infections and will also determine the mechanisms that this parasite uses to interfere with host immunity, it being recognised that this parasite secretes a range of immuno-active products. In order to achieve these aims, the applicants will employ state-of-the art techniques including genome-mining, high-throughput sequencing and protein mass spectrometry to identify possible parasite protein targets and to examine their functions and their effectiveness as vaccine candidates.
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