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Aquabiotechnology
leader launches shrimp R&D lab in San Diego
February 4,
2003
WALTHAM, MA
– Aqua Bounty Farms, Inc., a biotechnology leader dedicated
to the improvement of productivity in aquaculture, announces the
formation of Aqua Bounty Pacific, a California-based subsidiary
focused on shrimp broodstock improvement, immunostimulants and
disease diagnostics. The company’s initial products –
feed additives to enhance growth and disease resistance in shrimp,
and broodstock genetic improvements through marker-assisted selection
– promise to transform the economics of shrimp production
by shortening production horizons and extending yield ceilings
through dramatic reductions in shrimp mortality.
Aqua Bounty
Pacific is headed by Dr. Kurt Klimpel, the company’s COO
and Chief Technology Officer. Dr. Klimpel, formerly a research
scientist at the National Institutes of Health and a director
of research in the biotechnology industry, is a molecular biologist
who has spent his career specializing in the stimulation of immune
systems and the development of pharmaceuticals to counter bacterial
and viral pathogens. In addition to his many years of experience
working with viral and bacterial diseases of shrimp, he has pioneered
the use of real-time quantitative PCR for the detection and of
shrimp viruses. He has published more than a dozen recent papers
dealing with shrimp in major journals in the past several years.
The company
currently has two products in late-stage development to combat
both viral and bacterial diseases in shrimp: Shrimp IMS, an immunostimulatant
feed additive and topical therapeutant, and a virus-blocking “vaccine”
that specifically prevents White Spot Virus in uninfected shrimp
and stops its spread in previously infected populations. The improved
shrimp genetics program is organized into three product development
areas: forced selection using marker-assisted identification,
microarray gene identification and all-female shrimp lines for
growth improvement and biosecurity.
Aqua Bounty
Pacific will also make its advanced molecular technology base
available to the shrimp farming community through its contract
services division, offering bioassay disease challenges to breeders
and pre-clinical disease diagnostics to individual farms. ABP’s
early warning diagnostic services employ real time quantitative
PCR and custom designed reagents, primers and probes to detect
as little as a single molecule of the White Spot, Taura Syndrome,
Yellow Head, IHHNV, and GAV viruses and the NHP bacteria up to
30 days before infected shrimp become symptomatic.
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