Published Paper Details:

Compared with the animal husbandry, Fish farming is new method and it is rapidly becoming one of the pivotal sectors in the agriculture economy across the World, driven by the ever-increasing demand for high quality animal protein at reasonable price, especially with the exponentially increasing human population. However, the development of high density fish populations also brings forth a challenge - the hasty transmission and spread of infectious disease agents in aquaculture. During the early days, when diseases appeared in aqua-farming practices, antibiotics or chemotherapeutics were used for disease treatment, and even for disease control. Preventive measures have become more and more significant as part of bio-security in aquaculture. Disease prevention by using vaccines is predominantly important in aquaculture where the number of individuals at high risk and where treatment is a challenge from practical, technical and economic points of view. Vaccination in general, a safe and cost-effectively acceptable preventive measure as it contributes to a sustainable aquaculture with low use of antibiotics. To control and prevent viral, bacterial and some extent parasitic infectious diseases, vaccination is the well-organized method. In the 1938 Snieszko et al., reported very first in his published article about disease prevention using vaccines and protective immunity in carp immunized with Aeromonas punctata. Vaccine development technology in aqua-farming has advanced very rapidly after the invention of the inactivated Aeromonas salmonicida vaccine in 1942. Fish vaccination has been used in aquaculture since the 1980s to prevent infectious diseases. Now there is diverse range of vaccines commercially available in the market including live attenuated, killed/inactivated or genetically engineered vaccines for viral and bacterial diseases. Currently, most commercially available vaccines for aquatic organisms are inactivated, and the basic method of manufacturing of vaccines is still the inactivation by means of either physical or chemical methods of virulent wild-type pathogens. However, live attenuated vaccination in aquaculture practices offers numerous beneficial effects over inactivated vaccines viz., method of vaccination is simple, manufacturing costs are low, provide prolonged immunity, vaccine delivery is very rapid and low dose of immunization. In recent times, with the incessant diminution of technological price (for example, sequencing of genome, sophistication in screening of antigens, advancements in cell culture, etc), the progress of innovative antigen expression and delivery mechanisms, and the immense accretion of fundamental knowledge on mucosal immunity of fish, vaccines for aquaculture are guaranteed to see rapid improvement in the upcoming years. Advancement in developing greatly effective vaccines against mucosal immunity and subsequent adjuvants is a significant direction for forthcoming development, and improving vaccine delivery methods will certainly enable the new vaccines development.