German biotech AquaNab secures funding to tackle sea lice with nanoantibodies

AquaNab, a Hamburg startup, has picked up investment from Nordic Foodtech VC to push its nanoantibody platform for aquaculture. For the Finnish firm, it’s the first deal it has made outside the Nordic region.

The company was founded by Dr Ruth Tamara Montero, Dr Alejandro Rojas Fernandez and Gunnar Johildarson. Its first target is sea lice, a parasite that keeps hammering salmon farming and is estimated to cost the global aquaculture industry about $4 billion a year through treatment costs, production losses and fish mortality.

That pain point has created room for alternatives. Chemical and mechanical delousing methods can raise concerns about fish welfare and the environment, so AquaNab is betting on a different route: precision nanoantibodies called AquaNabs that are given to fish through feed.

AquaNab says its research has shown the alpaca-derived nanoantibodies can pass through the fish’s intestinal barrier and reach the bloodstream. That would make the approach less invasive than many current treatments, at least in theory, and it gives the company a cleaner story than the usual aquaculture arms race of chemicals versus parasites.

The first product is being built for Atlantic salmon, but the broader platform is meant to be adapted to bacterial, viral and parasitic diseases in other aquaculture species. Nordic Foodtech VC’s money will help the company move toward proof of concept, deepen work with salmon producers, feed manufacturers and animal health companies, and head toward commercialising its first products.