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Excellent Science INNOVATION
An improved filter for healthier aquaculture
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Market Maturity: Exploring
These are innovations that are actively exploring value creation opportunities. Learn more
Market Creation Potential
This innovation was assessed by the JRC’s Market Creation Potential indicator framework as having a Very high” level of Market Creation Potential. Only innovations that are showing multiple signals of market creation potential are assigned a value under this indicator system. Learn more
Women-led innovation
A woman had a leadership role in developing this innovation in at least one of the Key Innovator organisations listed below.
Go to Market needs
Needs that, if addressed, can increase the chances this innovation gets to (or closer to) the market incude:
  • Prepare for Market entry
  • Scale-up market opportunities
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Key Innovators
UN Sustainable Development Goals(SDG)
This innovation contributes to the following SDG(s)
SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 2
End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture

The UN explains: "It is time to rethink how we grow, share and consume our food.

If done right, agriculture, forestry and fisheries can provide nutritious food for all and generate decent incomes, while supporting people-centred rural development and protecting the environment.

Right now, our soils, freshwater, oceans, forests and biodiversity are being rapidly degraded. Climate change is putting even more pressure on the resources we depend on, increasing risks associated with disasters such as droughts and floods. Many rural women and men can no longer make ends meet on their land, forcing them to migrate to cities in search of opportunities.

A profound change of the global food and agriculture system is needed if we are to nourish today’s 815 million hungry and the additional 2 billion people expected by 2050.

The food and agriculture sector offers key solutions for development, and is central for hunger and poverty eradication."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 3
Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages

The UN explains: "Significant strides have been made in increasing life expectancy and reducing some of the common killers responsible for child and maternal mortality.

Major progress has also been made on increasing access to clean water and sanitation, reducing malaria, tuberculosis, polio and the spread of HIV/AIDS.

However, many more efforts are needed to control a wide range of diseases and address many different persistent and emerging health issues."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 6
Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all

The UN explains: "Clean water is a basic human need, and one that should be easily accessible to all. There is sufficient fresh water on the planet to achieve this. However, due to poor infrastructure, investment and planning, every year millions of people — most of them children — die from diseases associated with inadequate water supply, sanitation and hygiene."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 14
Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development

The UN explains: "Our oceans — their temperature, circulation, chemistry, and ecosystems — play a fundamental role in making Earth habitable.

Our rainwater, drinking water, weather, climate, coastlines, much of our food, and even the oxygen in the air we breathe, are all ultimately provided and regulated by the sea. Throughout history, oceans and seas have been vital conduits for trade and transportation. Careful management of this essential global resource is a key feature of a sustainable future."

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOAL 12
Ensure sustainable consumption and production patterns

The UN explains: "Sustainable consumption and production is about promoting resource and energy efficiency, sustainable infrastructure, and providing access to basic services, green and decent jobs and a better quality of life for all. Its implementation helps to achieve overall development plans, reduce future economic, environmental and social costs, strengthen economic competitiveness and reduce poverty.

The EU-funded Research Project
This innovation was developed under the Horizon 2020 project PathoGelTrap with an end date of 30/11/2023
  • Read more about this project on CORDIS
Description of Project PathoGelTrap
Aquaculture is a key player to ensure future food and nutrition security. However, intensive farming models are leading to a dramatic increase in infection outbreaks that drastically impact fish health, food production, the environment and this industry's bottom line. Current strategies to control and prevent infections in intensive aquaculture (mainly vaccines and antibiotics) have important drawbacks, which pose a great challenge to the future sustainability of global fish production. Here, we propose to transform the aquaculture future through a paradigm change in infectious-disease management practices by providing industry with a pioneering pathogen-trapping technology, PathoGelTrap, able to target and remove specific pathogens directly from water. Going way beyond the state of the art, we will use the current knowledge on self-assembling properties of the Liquid-Liquid Phase Separation proteins (LLPS) and affibodies (AFB) to rationally design a chimeric biomimetic material (LLPS-AFB chimera) that will efficiently recognize and trap fish pathogens (both viruses and bacteria) directly in the water and inactivate them. Thanks to the versatility offered by LLPS proteins, we propose to provide the industry with two different solutions: i) PathoGelTrap Liquid (only for closed fish farms): here the LLPS-AFB monomeric protein acts as a flocculant agent to be added in situ, i.e. directly into the fish-farm water. The protein will bind the targeted pathogens in the water and later self-assemble into liquid droplets that will evolve into hydrogels, which will drag in turn the pathogen to the bottom; ii) PathoGelTrap Filter: here we will cast a customized LLPS-AFB hydrogel to be used as a preformed filter that will trap the pathogens as they pass through the regular aquaculture filtration systems. This proposal represents a significant advance in biomaterial engineering opening the door for a revolutionary approach for infectious disease control in Aquaculture.

Innnovation Radar's analysis of this innovation is based on data collected on 06/10/2021.
The unique id of this innovation in the European Commission's IT systems is: 102660