Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

Atlantic salmon farming contributes over $600 million annually to the Canadian economy. The industry is controversial due to the perceived damage it causes to the environment, in part, through the spread of sea lice, Lepeophtheirus salmonis infections to wild stocks. Losses to Canadian industry, attributed to L. salmonis infection and the associated cost of chemotherapeutic treatment, have been estimated at more than $50 million/yr. Therefore, sea lice infection in farmed salmon is both an important environmental and economic issue, especially within coastal communities and First Nations. Over the last two decades only a handful of different treatments against sea lice have been available, the most effective treatment, through the early part of the new millennium, was an in-feed treatment called SLICETM (Schering-Plough), which now has exhibited inefficacy due to resistance by sea lice in numerous countries over the past couple years. Any new treatment regime, vaccine or immunostimulant that can provide significant protection, would have immediate economic impact and improve Canadian salmon farming industry efficiency of production and sustainability. 'Silver bullet' vaccine strategies are unlikely for a complex metazoan parasite, however, we currently lack detailed knowledge of key parasitic processes in host selection and host modulation/maintenance and the immunogenicity of parasitic compounds therein, for sea lice. Crossing this barrier will open up the possibility of combinatorial strategies, whereby disguising host recognition molecules can be combined with targeting host innate signaling and responsiveness in concert with specific long-term parasite pathway disruption through multivalent vaccination. The goals of this research program are to understand copepod parasite settlement dynamics, settlement 'choice', and evolutionary pressures on the parasite-host interaction. Furthermore, this program seeks to put this knowledge to the continual test of developing applications for the aquaculture industry.