AquaNab raises funding to fight salmon’s $4bn sea lice problem with alpaca nanoantibodies
Hamburg biotech is taking an unusual shot at salmon farming’s most expensive pest, and it starts with an alpaca. AquaNab is developing tiny antibodies, derived from the animals and delivered through fish feed, to treat and prevent sea lice.
The parasite it is chasing is a genuine scourge. Sea lice cost the aquaculture industry billions of dollars a year in treatment, lost production and fish deaths, a toll AquaNab puts at around $4bn, and they have proven stubbornly hard to keep down.
The trouble is that the cures can be almost as bad as the disease. Farmers currently reach for chemical baths and mechanical delousing, both of which are costly, stressful for the fish, and increasingly scrutinised by regulators worried about chemical runoff and animal welfare.
AquaNab’s answer leans on a well-established quirk of biology. Camelids like alpacas produce unusually small, sturdy antibodies, known as nanoantibodies or nanobodies, and the...
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