由于全球变暖，养殖和野生鱼中的新兴传染病爆发。因此，对气候驱动疾病的可持续和道德研究需要数据驱动和广泛可访问的方法，明确地纳入温度依赖性流行病学动态。该提案的主要目的是为研究人员开发用于鱼类疫苗开发和疾病监测的研究人员的优化实验暴露协议。学生们关注增殖性肾脏疾病（PKD），气候变化驱动，全世界沙明盐鲑鱼的严重新兴传染病。PKD已成为威胁英国鳟鱼水产养殖可持续性的主要寄生虫疾病之一，是欧洲棕色鳟鱼群体下降的主要原因。PKD的健康后果是严重影响的鱼类经历巨大的肾脏组织，贫血和冷漠的巨大增殖，变得更加易受继发感染。尽管水产养殖行业和野生渔业每年遭受显着突出的PKD相关损失，但缺乏对PKD的治疗方法已经成功地建立，并且由于实验性感染挑战缺乏最佳实践指南，疫苗开发工作受到阻碍。该提议的目的是优化PKD实验挑战模型，以限制鱼类作为与PKD相关研究中疾病哨兵的使用。我们建议通过以前开发的方法来实现这一点1）通过水采样和检测环境DNA的量化剂量，并使用血清学测量暴露鱼中的PKD特异性免疫。这些方法将提供新的最佳实践挑战协议，以及监控工具包。 Therefore, this studentship project has outcomes which impact the Reduction and Refinement aspects of the 3Rs principles. Reduction will be achieved by removing the need for sentinel fish and successively exposed fish cohorts during experimental challenge. Refinement is achieved by developing a non-lethal, serology based method of measuring fish immunity, relying on blood samples instead lethal sampling, providing a much more sensitive measure of infection status, and, for the first time, allowing the collection of temporal data on the response of individual fish. This will also reduce the number of fish needed to achieve acceptable sample size in experiments, allowing future scaling up of large field trials during vaccine development work. The combined eDNA and serology provides a unique opportunity to non-lethally track the dynamics of specific immune activity towards the parasite as a strong proxy of immunological memory and protective immunity development. For the first time, we will be able to understand the anti-PKD antibody dynamics in pre-exposed fish that are consistent with sufficient parasite exposure to induce natural protective immunity when re-exposed the following year. The use of non-lethally sampled fish during preexposure and re-exposure will enable the tracking of antibody responses in individual fish in order to understand the relationship between antibody dynamics of fish when first exposed to parasites and how antibody levels change during reexposure and how this links to efficient natural protective immunity. In addition to research, PKD clearly affects fish health throughout the salmonid aquaculture industry; 4-4.5M trout annually in the UK are exposed to PKD using the challenge model we propose to improve. If successful, our proposed approaches could significantly reduce the numbers of fish suffering severe PKD on farms (up to 300,000 trout per growing season in the UK die of PKD despite pre-exposure programs). To facilitate research uptake of our protocols, we work with fish health professionals, linking the detailed experimental data with the commercial stocks, which allows benchmarking our results to the current best-practise on farms.
