Orally-Delivered Fish Vaccines

One of the most economical ways to protect animal health is by using immunizations to guardagainst disease. This approach can be challenging since most vaccines are injected which presentspractical problems for administration to commercial lifestock. This is particularly true with fishvaccines due to the labor required to handle them individually in an aqueous environment and theneed to keep the cost low.Oral delivery of subunit vaccines is a promising alternative approach. Subunit vaccines areinherently safe as there is no potential for pathogen replication and they can be incorporateddirectly into feed keeping administration costs low. Recent work using new technology tobioencapsulate the vaccine candidate into maize grain enables the antigen to reach target cells andelicit an efficacious immune response when tested in other animals. Our preliminary work hasshown this technique can also work for fish vaccines.This proposal is designed to produce a novel vaccine antigen using our innovative platform toprotect against Pancreas Disease in salmon. Our collaborator will then evaluate the efficacy of thecandidate to protect against a challenge with the virus. Successful completion of this work willresult in the development of the first commercial subunit oral vaccine for fish. This will set aprecedent for vaccines for other pathogens in fish and provide a new tool to combat disease in alabor-saving cost effective manner.