Bionaturis to Develop Oral Vaccines for the Aquaculture Industry

The idea for the project emerged from the Bionaturis internal aquaculture R&D team after analysing the sectors needs in the meetings recently held between international and national producers and veterinary companies.

The technical goal is to design and develop new oral therapeutic and prophylactic vaccines, based on the cutting-edge FLYLIFE production system (using insect larva as bioreactors to produce biological drugs), which can be used more safety and efficiently to protect against major diseases that currently affect aquaculture.

The research programme, which will run for three years, is led by Ana de las Heras, a Bionaturis scientific researcher with a PhD in Veterinary Sciences. This project is being cofunded by Corporacin Tecnolgica de Andaluca (CTA).

Thanks to our Flylife technological platform, stressed Ana de las Heras, we will develop vaccines and other types of treatment to be administered orally in a safe and efficient way for some of the main pathogens that currently affect aquaculture.

It will be a huge step forward for this sector as so far injections have been the only way that has proven to be really effective, but they are greatly limited due to the cost and handling. Not just the stress generated by handling but also the size of the fish limit the use of vaccines by injection.

This project, aimed at the most important pathogens and species in Andalusia, positions Bionaturis as a benchmark in the fish vaccine research and development, where exponential growth is forecasted for coming years.