Sustainable seafood project wins Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge
A sustainable seafood initiative won the Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge’s grand prize grant today, Nov. 16, said Gulf Coast Community Foundation leaders in southwest Florida. Mote Marine Laboratory scientists are partners in the winning project, for which they are planning a sustainable fish-farming study, and they will continue to work with their investor and business partners to seek leveraged financial support for three other projects that advanced significantly as Innovation Challenge finalists.
The first-ever Innovation Challenge, an initiative of Gulf Coast Community Foundation, aimed to advance marine science and Southwest Florida’s “blue economy.” This incentive-grant challenge — likened to the XPRIZE for its focus on problem-solving innovation — sought new solutions for blue economy pillars like marine science, technology, biomedicine, sustainable aquaculture, healthy fisheries and much more.
The winning project, “Healthy Earth-Gulf Coast: Sustainable Seafood System,” was selected by Gulf Coast’s Board of Directors and will receive up to $375,000 in grant funds, in addition to the $25,000 grant it received as a finalist. The project aims to build a thriving, local seafood industry, especially by enhancing the sustainability and economic impact of the heritage fishery for grey striped mullet based in Cortez, Fla. The project leader is Healthy Earth — a Sarasota-based company that works to develop sustainable and economically viable sources of seafood. The project includes a diverse team of private and nonprofit partners from the local Chiles Restaurant Group that that champions sustainability, the Cortez fishing community and scientists from Mote.
Mote — an internationally recognized, independent research institution with a nearly $90-million statewide economic impact — will conduct a major study for the winning project, starting in 2016. Overall, Mote led or partnered in four of the five finalist projects. (Details below about Mote's work winning project and three other finalist projects.)
Gulf Coast CEO Mark Pritchett said the winning team’s bold aspirations, backed by a plan and the partners to realize them, dovetailed with the foundation’s priorities in launching an incentive-grant challenge centered on the region’s marine science and technology cluster. “From the beginning, we said this Innovation Challenge was about saving our seas, feeding our communities, and growing our blue economy,” noted Pritchett. “As a country, we import 90 percent of the seafood we consume, and here in Florida, we buy $2.6 billion of seafood from overseas every year. Healthy Earth – Gulf Coast has laid out a plan that addresses those imbalances, and we think the regional impact could be transformational.”
He added that many other participating projects show great potential to continue growing and bolstering the region’s blue economy.
Mote scientists and their partners truly put their hearts and minds into the Innovation Challenge — and consequently, every Mote project has grown substantially, forged new scientific and business partnerships and developed exciting new opportunities for investment and commercial collaboration.
“The Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge has raised the world-class research enterprise of Mote to a new level of visibility and potential for broader impact,” said Dr. Michael P. Crosby, President & CEO of Mote. “We are delighted that Mote's scientific expertise was instrumental for the winning project, which will develop innovative technology to sustainably utilize the outstanding fisheries resources in our own backyard and around the world. Just as importantly, each of the four finalist projects in which Mote science and technology played such a significant role enabled transformation from exciting marine science into ‘shovel-ready’ opportunities for investors to grow the blue economy in our region — whether they are interested in developing critical new medicines from the sea, preserving our dwindling freshwater resources or transforming seafood production to help feed the world.”
Mote’s role in Healthy Earth-Gulf Coast: Sustainable Seafood System
The Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge winner, “Healthy Earth-Gulf Coast: Sustainable Seafood System,” aims to build a thriving, local seafood industry based on the production of value-added, sustainable seafood products while emphasizing both environmental and cultural preservation. Project partners aim to enhance the sustainability and economic impact of the heritage fishery for grey striped mullet based in Cortez, Fla. Partners hope to enable this fishery to become certified as sustainable by the Marine Stewardship Council, to support U.S.-based production of the valuable bottarga (prepared mullet roe), and maximize the benefits of under-used or unused parts of the mullet, including fillets for market and fish oil and meal to feed sustainably farmed fish.
Mote Marine Laboratory researchers, known internationally for their expertise with sustainable fish farming, will play a key role in developing and testing the fish meal and oil derived from mullet byproducts.
“We’re going to take these byproducts that are currently not used and study how to use them for a really great purpose — helping to make the existing commercial fisheries more sustainable and finding better ways to feed fish grown in aquaculture, a process that supplies half the world’s seafood,” said Mote senior scientist Dr. Kevan Main.
Main, past president of the World Aquaculture Society, says that aquaculture is growing swiftly. It currently provides 50 percent of global seafood and production is projected to double by 2050, but the traditional sources of fish chow — processed wild fish — are reaching their maximum output.
“Finding new, sustainable ways to feed aquaculture fish is critical for our future,” Main said. “We have to look at better utilizing products that are not being fully utilized now, such as the mullet from Cortez that are central to this project led by Healthy Earth. We also have to look at developing alternative feeds, such as marine algae, that require no harvest of wild fish. These alternatives are another key interest that we hope to explore at Mote.”
For the Healthy Earth-Gulf Coast Sustainable Seafood System, Mote will lead implementation of a fish chow study expected to run through 2017. Mote scientists will scientifically test fish feeds prepared from mullet meal and oil as a diet for saltwater and freshwater fish at Mote Aquaculture Park (MAP), the Lab’s sustainable fish farming research facility in eastern Sarasota County. There, Mote scientists are advancing eco-friendly ways to raise saltwater fish and plants for environmental restoration and gourmet markets, while recycling 100 percent of the saltwater. Also at MAP, the Healthy Earth brand of Southeast Venture Holdings (Seven Holdings) is operating the sustainable, sturgeon-caviar business operation that was initiated by Mote researchers and licensed to Seven Holdings in 2014.
Mote’s new aquaculture research project will examine how well the mullet-byproduct fish chow can nourish saltwater red drum and pompano raised by Mote and freshwater sturgeon farmed by Healthy Earth, compared with traditional, commercial fish feeds.
Once the mullet byproducts are processed into fish diets, Mote scientists aim to begin the feeding study at MAP by spring 2016.
“The whole point is to take this mullet that is already valued so much and use all of the products it can provide,” Main said. “We at Mote have the innovative aquaculture technology in place to test some of these important products, and to test them for feeding both freshwater and marine fishes, which will make our results much more useful to the aquaculture industry.”
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Multiple Mote finalist projects to continue
Three additional projects led by Mote scientists and their partners were declared finalists in the Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge, laying the foundations to bring their successes from the lab to the world. Through the Innovation Challenge, these projects — designed to benefit human health and sustain vital freshwater resources — advanced their cutting-edge research, developed new scientific and commercial partnerships and outlined business plans and opportunities to leverage investments.
- Investors, commercial entities and philanthropic donors are invited to learn more, explore partnership opportunities and support these ongoing projects. Contact Erin Knievel at eknievel@mote.org or 941-388-4441, ext. 415.
Antibiotics from the Sea
In “Antibiotics from the Sea,” Mote and commercial collaborator Omeza, LLC are advancing research and investment into finding and developing ocean-derived antibiotics that hold promise for battling dangerous infections in humans.
Mote researchers have extensively studied marine microbes (microscopic life forms such as bacteria) that benefit ocean organisms such as corals and fishes. They’ve already found that some marine microbes involved in ocean animal health have the potential to help humans. Marine microbes have existed much longer than humans or other animal life, giving the microbes more time to evolve amazing abilities that scientists are uncovering now.
For example, Mote’s Coral Reef Ecology & Microbiology Research Program has found that some ocean-derived microbes produce antibiotic substances that show promise for fighting dangerous pathogens like MRSA (or methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus), strains of Enterococcus species and other infectious bacteria that have developed resistance to existing antibiotic treatments. These pathogens can cause major problems in hospitals. Also, some ocean-derived bacteria seem to produce broad-spectrum antibiotic substances.
Combining the scientific strength of Mote and the business acumen of Omeza has lain critical groundwork for discovering and bringing bring forth new therapeutic agents to counter serious human pathogens.
In the prototype phase of the Innovation Challenge, this project advanced significantly as partners achieved the following goals:
- Created and packaged prototype products that show real potential for commercialization. These packaged products are all marine-based, advanced wound care products that will help chronic wounds heal faster. Two of them show potential as delivery vehicles for antibiotics from the sea.
- Identified and began taking key steps toward patenting new topical, antibacterial products and toward isolating specific, promising marine-derived molecules for further development as drug candidates.
- Outlined a business plan to help antibiotic substances discovered in the lab advance to commercial use. This included defining essential milestones for investors and identifying key commercial opportunities.
- Examined ways to market Mote’s “library” of ocean-derived bacteria strains — including yet-to-be-studied bacteria that could offer benefits beyond antibiotics — to the scientific community.
Cancer Therapies from Sharks
“Cancer Therapies from Sharks” — a partnership effort among Mote, University of Central Florida and commercial collaborators Sun BioPharma and Northern Capital Partners — is building upon Mote’s unique research with cancer-fighting substances from shark immune systems. The project is bringing Mote’s innovative basic research to new levels with the ultimate goal of finding and developing improved treatments for cancer patients.
Sharks and their relatives have a low incidence of disease, including cancer. Scientists in Mote’s Marine Biomedical Research Program and Marine Immunology Program have found that certain substances from shark immune systems have cancer-fighting properties that inhibit 15 human tumor cell lines in the lab. Mote scientists have learned a great deal about how these substances attack cancer cells — including that the substances attack cancer cells preferentially to non-cancerous cells. That is a promising discovery in the long-term quest for new cancer therapies.
Mote and UCF scientists hope to isolate active agent(s) from Mote’s shark-derived, cancer-fighting substance, and work with Sun BioPharma and Northern Capital experts in pharmaceutical development and finance to move the research results toward drug development. The project aims to advance a Florida-based biotech enterprise to develop and commercialize marine science and technology.
During the prototype phase of the Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge, Mote scientists worked toward a key goal: seeking a way to continuously grow the bonnethead shark immune system cells that produce the cancer fighting substance. This is a step toward ensuring that more of the cancer-fighting substance can be produced without the need to catch more sharks.
In addition, Mote and UCF scientists advanced their joint studies to ensure the cancer-fighting compounds can be shipped safely and worked to verify whether the compounds fight cancer cells similarly in two different laboratories — an important step in validating any scientific study aimed at developing potential therapies for use in human diseases such as cancer.
Using these experiments as a guide, UCF will begin examining which specific component(s) of the substance might be responsible for its cancer-fighting properties. They will use a variety of columns designed to separate molecules, concentrate the separated compounds and test them again with cancer cells to see how well each component of the original mix might contribute to its cancer-killing properties.
During the prototype phase, the project team made significant progress on growing the shark cells in culture and with agreements to guide the long-term development of the anti-cancer product they hope to create, including the ownership and licensure of intellectual property, the formation of a new company and a framework for investment needs and estimated earnings.
Advanced Solar-powered Filtration Technology for Marine and Freshwater
Mote, the University of Washington’s Pollack Laboratory, and ROBRADY design are working to turn basic research into a working water-purification device that could transform marine and freshwater filtration models.
This project aims to further develop, market and manufacture a new technology that produces a renewable source of clean, fresh water from recycled wastewater and desalination of brackish and salt water. This goal is critical: Water sources such as aquifers are becoming depleted and many are being contaminated by billions of gallons of wastewater, which are being produced continuously.
Dr. Gerald Pollack and his team at the University of Washington have invented and patented an exciting solar-powered, water-filtration system. The system uses the natural behavior of water molecules against specific surfaces to separate out harmful substances without needing to pass the water through a filter. It uses sunlight energy to enhance the purification process. The Pollack Lab has developed three prototypes of the new technology, with each prototype demonstrating improvement for water purification of chemical contaminants, pathogens and desalination.
During the prototype phase of the Gulf Coast Innovation Challenge, Mote scientists worked with Pollack Lab to test the patented technology to verify the system’s efficiency in removing contaminants from the water. Mote tested the system with toxins from Florida red tide algae — a type of natural toxin the Pollack lab had not yet tested in the system. Florida red tide toxins have properties shared by many other natural toxins and human-made contaminants, making them ideal for testing and improving the system.
Working with the researchers, ROBRADY design — a Sarasota-based, internationally recognized design, engineering and marketing firm — has developed a viable business plan outline for real-world application of this system, examining the potential economic impact, job-creation opportunities and other essentials of interest to potential investors or commercial partners.
The research and development team plans to continue testing the new prototypes with improvements until they are highly efficient at removing contaminants and salts to derive freshwater from seawater. ROBRADY design estimates that a viable product will be ready for marketing within a year.