UMaine to Establish Cold-Water, High-Level Containment Aquatic Laboratory
Contacts: Ian Bricknell (207) 581-4380 or ian.bricknell@umit.maine.edu; Debbie Bouchard (207) 581-2767 or dbouchard@umext.maine.edu
The University of Maine is establishing a high-level containment facility for cold-water aquaculture research, which will be the only laboratory of its kind in the U.S. and one of few worldwide.
FISHLab, which will be built to Bio-Safety Level-III specifications, will be open to university researchers and private industry, and will more than double the amount of high-level containment space UMaine has for conducting experiments on pathogens of aquatic animals. The higher the BSL rating, the more able a facility is to handle and contain biological agents in a closed laboratory.
Eventually, the new facility could lead to more U.S.-approved vaccines to treat diseases in fish, frogs, lobsters, sea urchins, and dozens of other species.
“This gives us an edge to do research here and to attract research to come in our direction,” said Debbie Bouchard, manager of the Maine Aquatic Animal Health Laboratory at UMaine. “Currently we do have one small isolation unit, and that’s booked for the next two years. This gives us an opportunity for three times the space and twice the high-containment space.”
The new UMaine lab should be able to handle most of the projects and research on the waiting list.
The new facility will have three distinct uses. First, UMaine’s own scientists will be able to perform their own research there. Second, private companies can pay UMaine for support services in the lab while they conduct their own research. Third, private companies can contract with the university to do an entire project.
Bouchard and Ian Bricknell, the Libra Professor of Aquaculture Biology and Director of UMaine’s Aquaculture Research Institute, recently received a $600,000 grant from the Maine Technology Asset Fund Maine Technology Institute to fund construction of the facility, which is planned for a spot adjacent to the Aquaculture Research Center. Construction is expected to start next spring and last about one year.
Recommendation letters from international pharmaceutical giant Novartis and Richmond, Maine-based Micro Technologies bolstered UMaine’s grant application. Both companies are currently doing or have done lab work at UMaine.
The new BSL-III rated facility will include features designed to keep pathogens from escaping the lab and getting into the environment. The facility will have anterooms connected to the labs so researchers can change out of street clothes and into work clothes, and vice versa. There will be washing machines in the anterooms so used lab coats and other items can be washed immediately after use. The changing areas will also have a separate airflow from the laboratory spaces. An ultraviolet light will be used at night to disinfect the facility.
“Because it’s such a high level of containment, it means we’ll be able to work with pathogens that are not only exotic to Maine but exotic to the U.S. as well, with no risk of them escaping into the wild,” Bricknell said. “We’ll be able to work with diseases that are an up-and-coming risk to aquaculture and fisheries in Maine, with minimal risk.”
The high-level containment facility would allow researchers to study, for example, the pathogen that causes viral hemorrhagic septicemia, a highly contagious fish disease present in the Mississippi basin in which the animals’ blood vessels become leaky, leading to mass mortalities.
“We’d be very keen to keep this disease out of Maine, and if we ever had an outbreak we’d like to be able to work with that disease here rather than relying other research,” Bricknell said.
The lobster industry could also use the lab to do research on alternative baits brought in from other geographic areas.
There is at least one BSL-III facility in the U.S. for warm-water research and there are cold-water BSL-III facilities in places such as Scotland, England, Australia, Denmark and Norway. In those countries, dozens of fish vaccines are licensed for veterinary use – for example in Norway, Bricknell said, there are 30-40 approved treatment, while in the U.S., which hasn’t had this type of facility, there are just nine.
“Veterinarians will have a much better scope of animal treatment and welfare,” Bricknell said. “This is a huge step toward making us competitive.”