The research project is carried on by the Norwegian College of Fishery Science, NOFIMA, the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science, Bodø Regional College and the vaccine company PHARMAC AS, the Institute of Marine Research. They have been awarded NOK 44 million for a major Norwegian-Indian research project that aims to develop new vaccines for fish and shrimp. It is said that the project will run for four years and the consortium will collaborate with seven extremely competent Indian research institutions.
The main purpose of this project is to identify and characterise antigens in important disease-producing organisms (bacteria and viruses) in fish and shrimp and to develop effective preventive treatments for them. It is going to be a big profit for the aquaculture industries of both the nations. The project expects to supply new vaccine concepts for the industry in two countries.
Scientist Audun H. Nerland opined that the cooperative project that has just been funded is a continuation of a project on which the scientists have been working at the Institute of Marine Research. He said that in this research the scientists have been looking at how the halibut’s immune system reacts to infections. According to him researchers already well under way with mapping the immune system in halibut and cod and have done a great deal of work on nodaviruses, which have posed a challenge to aquaculture in both India and Norway.
It si informed that the Norwegian side of the project is being funded by the Research Council of Norway and will be shared by research teams at Fiskeriforskning (now known as NOFIMA) in Tromsø, the Institute of Marine Research in Bergen, the Norwegian School of Veterinary Science in Oslo, Bodø Regional College and PHARMAQ in
Oslo for a period of four years.
