Grant: Engage Grants Program

Aquaculture is an important industry for Canada, and viruses pose a major threat to the health of farmed fish. There are no antiviral treatments available to treat virus infected cultured fish. Mirexus has developed a glycogen-based nanoparticle that is natural, biodegradable, non-toxic and easily modifiable, called Phytospherix. We hypothesize that Phytospherix with different modifications will have (1) antiviral activity and (2) act as a carrier to enable easily delivery of antiviral therapeutics to cells. The research team at WLU specializes in studying virus-host interactions at the cellular level and will test these hypotheses using fish cell cultures and aquatic virus infection models. To test its antiviral activity, Mirexus will develop positively charged Phytospherix particles that will preferentially bind virus particles, making them unable to infect host cells. Changes to virus infectivity will be measured using standard virus replication assays. To test its carrier activity, Phytospherix particles will be modified to bind the potent antiviral molecule, double-stranded (ds)RNA. When inside the cell, dsRNA is able to stimulate pathways within the cell to protect it from incoming virus infections. Changes in these dsRNA-mediated antiviral responses in the presence of Phytospherix will also be measured. Not only will this technology aid in the development of novel antiviral therapies for farmed fish, which is aid the Canadian economy, it will also lay the groundwork for novel therapeutic strategies in humans as well.