Grant: Engage Grants Program

There are three species of sturgeon grown in culture for caviar within Canada. Over the past decade this industry has grown exponentially, and both Target Marine Hatcheries (BC) and Acadian Sturgeon and Caviar Inc. (NB),have experienced increased caviar production by >60% since 2011, and Breviro Caviar Inc. (NB) quadrupled its production in 2013 through a $2.5 million expansion (Financial Post, 2013). Now, Russian, Siberian and Beluga sturgeon are being marketed out of North Carolina and Florida, since 2014. Healthy, cultured fish are crucial to the profitability and sustainability of these industries, however, unlike terrestrial cattle, wildlife or even companion animal industries, fish culture and specifically sturgeon culture lacks any diagnostic test for infection, inflammation and or stress. As sturgeons are long lived, late maturing fish that do not spawn every year, and most of their populations suffer from extreme exploitation and endangerment, highly fecund broodstock are rare and extremely valuable. This creates an important niche for non-invasive, rapid health screening. In other species, acute phase protein (APP) assessments have become more valuable due to their sensitivity and predictive function. Serum amyloid A and haptoglobin (Hp) are highly conserved specifically and are known to respond in Atlantic sturgeon to bacteria/LPS with similar kinetics to higher vertebrates. Somru BioScience Inc. is an emerging biotechnology company dedicated to developing breakthrough antibody technology for research, diagnostic and therapeutic applications. Somru would like to initiate this project to establish the company as a high quality bioassay provider for the aquaculture industry. Somru develops custom antibodies and generate quality reagents that enable drug development and can perform fit-for purpose validations for antibody reagents. The objectives of this research are to: Determine conserved regions of APP (SAA, Hp, Srt) in sturgeon species, develop polyclonal antibodies to sturgeon APP and determine kinetics of APP in blood of Atlantic sturgeon under bacterial challenge.