AQUA 2024

August 26 - 30, 2024

Copenhagen, Denmark

PROGRESS IN TREATING AMOEBIC GILL DISEASE USING TRYPANOCIDAL DRUGS: SUCCESS IN VITRO AND IN VIVO

 Yee Wan Liu*, Brendan Robertson, Bachar Cheaib, Neil Ruane, Roderick Williams, Michael P. Barrett, Martin S. Llewellyn, Fiona Henriquez-Mui, John Archibald

 

School of Infection & Immunity

University of Glasgow

Sir Graeme Davies Building

120 University Place

Glasgow G12 8TA

 



 Amoebic gill disease (AGD) is a devastating disease that causes multi-million-dollar losses annually in salmonid fish farming. The causative agent of AGD in Atlantic Salmon is Neoparamoeba perurans which belongs to the Paramoebidae family. An interesting feature of most of the Paramoebidae is the endosymbiotic relationship they have with the Perkinsela-like organism (PLO). The PLO is a kinetoplastid, distantly related to diseases causing parasites in humans such as Leishmania and Trypanosoma spp. and fish diseases such as Ichthyobodo spp.  As there appears to be a high level of metabolic interdependence between host and the symbiont, eliminating the PLO, which resides adjacent to the nucleus of its host, will hypothetically eliminate N. perurans . In pursuit of this goal, we have opted to utilise frontline and experimental trypanocidal drugs targeting the PLO both in vitro and in vivo .  As N. perurans cannot be cultivated axenically, conventional drug screening methods face hindrance due to bacterial activity within the amoebic culture. To assess in vitro efficacy, holographic microscopy was utilised to evaluate cell motility and viability under drug pressure .  Drugs demonstrating promising in vitro efficacy (figure 1) were subsequently tested in two rounds of in vivo trials on the West Coast of Ireland which had exhibited encouraging signs of effectiveness (figure 2) . It is anticipated that establishing a market for trypanocidal drugs in aquaculture could enhance fish welfare and potentially reduce production costs for the  application  of these drugs in a medical context within the tropics.