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Aqua Bounty
receives $1.68 million NIST award
September
11, 2003
WALTHAM, MA
– Aqua Bounty Technologies has been awarded a $1,680,000
grant from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s
Advanced Technology Program to develop a genetic technique that
allows fish farmers to breed fish safely in captivity but prevents
the same fish from reproducing if they escape into the wild.
“Reversible
sterility is a platform technology that will allow the $52-billion
global aquaculture industry to triple production over the next
two decades, as it must do to meet the expanding demand for seafood,”
said Elliot Entis, the Aqua Bounty president and CEO. “By
removing the risk that farmed fish might breed in the wild, this
technology opens the door for many new species in fish farming,
including transgenic fish and non-native species in locations
that do not now have access to the best-performing livestock.”
The project
will compare five differrent genetic engineering strategies to
interrupt the reproductive cycle in channel catfish and common
carp, and then attempt to reverse the process through various
fertility treatments. Offspring would be incapable of reproduction
from birth, but fish selected for breeding could be restored to
fertility in the secure conditions of a land locked hatchery.
Aqua Bounty
Technologies, formerly known as Aqua Bounty Farms, pioneered the
development of molecular breeding in fish. It’s advanced
hybrid salmon is currently under FDA review and on track to become
the first transgenic animal approved for food use. “The ATP
award is a vote of confidence in our company and in the prospects
for our technology to be employed commercially,” Entis said.
The company will fund 1.8-million of the $3.5-million project
cost. Researchers at Auburn University in Alabama will provide
catfish expertise and technical support to the project.
The ATP provides
cost-shared funding to industry-led teams, which can include non-profits
and universities, to help advance particularly challenging, high-risk
R&D projects that have the potential to spark important, broad-based
economic or social benefits for the United States. The program
supports projects that industry cannot fully fund on its own because
of significant technical risks. ATP awards are made on the basis
of rigorous, competitivve peer review of the scientific and technical
merit of each proposal. The program accelerates enabling technology
research, but does not support product development work. Further
information available at www.atp.nist.gov.
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