What the business is
A Hamburg biotech developing feed-delivered nanoantibody treatments for farmed fish, starting with Atlantic salmon sea lice.
Starting capital
Undisclosed investment from Nordic Foodtech VC.
How it started
Chief scientific officer Dr Alejandro Rojas was among the first researchers anywhere to develop neutralising nanobodies against SARS-CoV-2; CEO Dr Ruth Tamara Montero is a fish immunologist trained at Germany's Friedrich-Loeffler-Institut. Camelids like alpacas produce unusually small, sturdy antibodies — nanobodies — and AquaNab says it is the first in the world to deliver them to fish orally.
What happened
The company's research shows its AquaNabs survive the journey through the fish's gut and cross the intestinal barrier into the bloodstream — no handling, no stress, unlike chemical baths and mechanical delousing that regulators increasingly question over chemical runoff and animal welfare. Investors buy the platform story: partner Mika Kukkurainen frames feed-based nanoantibody science as rethinking health across food production.
What has to be true
The delivery mechanism is the product: nanobodies that survive digestion turn feed — the one thing every farm already does — into a medication channel.
It rides the shift from chemicals to biology in food production, where regulators and consumers are both pushing.
A specialist Nordic food-tech fund's first bet outside the Nordics is a signal of how thin credible aquaculture-health pipelines still are.
What can be applied
When the cure is as costly as the disease, change the delivery route instead of the drug: the same active ingredient, fed instead of bathed, can dissolve an entire treatment category.
Aftermath
As of the August 11, 2026 report, AquaNab remained pre-proof-of-concept with an undisclosed seed-stage investment; the material records no efficacy data or later milestones.
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