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Animal Health

Aquatic pathogens and parasites must be addressed to ensure aquatic food production and security. Our ability to maintain an array of finfish and shellfish species and life stages in freshwater and natural seawater allows us to customize study designs – focused on efficacy, target animal safety, residue depletion, and regulatory data collection – that tackle the most pressing aquatic animal health issues of our time.

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Contact Ehab Misk

Dr. Ehab Misk was installed as the New Brunswick Innovation Research Chair in Aquatic Biosciences in 2018 when he joined the Huntsman Marine Science Centre as a Research Scientist with a focus on aquatic animal health. Ehab has specific research interests focused on pathobiology, immunology, host-pathogen interaction of many important aquatic microbial, viral, fungal, and parasitic fish pathogens, and challenge model development. In his time with Huntsman, he has been involved in numerous applied research projects focused on fish health implications from innovative aquaculture technologies and various pharmaceutical projects associated with in-vitro/in-vivo efficacy, tissue residue depletion, and target animal safety of novel pharmaceutical ingredients. His studies have included a broad cross section of production species, including Atlantic salmon, lumpfish, sea urchins and glass eels, and various pathogens/parasites. A team of dedicated technical staff supports our Aquatic Animal Health research to maintain pathogens and parasites, conduct experimental challenges, collect samples, and perform laboratory analysis.

If you are inspired to support Huntsman Breeding & Genetics research, advancement of food production, or graduate student research at Huntsman then please donate or choose other ways to support the Huntsman mission today!

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RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

Our company – RPS Biologiques – is focused on becoming a leader in developing safe, all natural, fish health products for use in the aquaculture sector. We recently received two Notification Numbers from the Health Canada Veterinary Drugs Directorate (VDD) for our Veterinary Health Products (VHP), Supratect-L and Supratect-P thereby allowing marketing and sales in Canada. We wish to thank the professional conduct of the Huntsman staff to complete the validation testing for these products in support of our Health Canada submission and to make this significant step possible for our company.
Dr. Subrata Chowdhury, CEO, RPS Biologiques 

Customized Aquatic Animal Health Research

Aquatic Species and Life Stages

Equipment

Collaborations with Academia

Novel Drug and Pesticide Regulatory Approval Studies

Facilities

Example Projects

Selected Recent Publications

Customized Aquatic Animal Health Research

Huntsman facilities are very well equipped to support the project in life phase, required tissue collection, and statistical analysis and reporting. We work closely with several analytical laboratories located across Canada, US and Europe where we send samples, primarily various tissue and mixed medicated feed, using professional courier services who ensure the samples arrive meeting the needs of the study. Our Aquatic Animal Health research are broadly grouped into three major categories.
 

  • Collecting required regulatory datasets to support submissions to acquire approval for sale of new drugs and pesticides within food fish production. These studies primarily focus on efficacy, target animal safety and tissue residue depletion with numerous permutations on these specific themes completed over the years to address specific regulatory agency questions. These studies have been deployed in support of numerous regional biotechnology to large multinational pharmaceutical companies with our efforts positioning the Huntsman as the leading research organization in Canada focused on sea lice treatment options.

 

  • Enhancing aquatic animal welfare. Numerous products have been developed with the intent to increase aquatic animal welfare, especially in production settings. Companies developing these biotechnology or engineering advances have often chosen the Huntsman to measure various parameters that may elucidate improvements in animal welfare. In biotechnology, these studies have explored novel natural products to enhance the holding environment conditions, while engineered technologies have documented the effects of a high oxygen environment to new fish handling strategies. Study end points often range from immunological assays, stress markers, and biological responses, such as growth and feeding rates, survival and behavioral responses, including the return to feed time after handling.

 

  • Challenging individuals and families with pathogens to support selective breeding programs. These family based studies are designed in collaboration with our Breeding & Genetics expertise to ensure appropriate challenges are developed that allows estimates of heritability and breeding values for disease resistance and efficient selection to occur.

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