The current advances and challenges in the development of analytical methodologies, not only for existing aquatic biotoxins, but also for new toxins emerging as a result of various factors related to climate change, are the focus of the sixth edition of the International Symposium Marine and Freshwater Toxins Analysis from today until next Wednesday. Organized by the Department of Analytical and Food Chemistry of the University of Vigo, the symposium “focuses specifically on the analysis of aquatic, marine and freshwater biotoxins”, explains professor and researcher Ana Gago, who also directs the European Union Reference Laboratory for Marine Biotoxins. Around 90 international experts in the analysis of aquatic biotoxins, from the United States, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Chile, as well as representatives of the member states of the European Union, are participating in the international congress that is taking place at the Talaso Atlántico hotel in Baiona.
“The world’s most prominent experts in the field of aquatic biotoxin analysis are meeting once again in Oia to discuss advances and challenges in the development of analytical methodologies. They are relevant figures in the chemical analysis of marine and freshwater biotoxins, pioneers in the development of official methodologies, such as James Lawrence and Michael Quilliam,” explains Ana Gago, in relation to the participants and speakers who are taking part in the symposium in which there will be lectures, as well as the presentation of posters and round tables.
Six editions and growing
The symposium, which is sponsored by Campus do Mar and the European Union Reference Laboratory for Marine Biotoxins, is reaching its sixth edition this year, “with a very favorable evolution, in which the number of participants is increasing in successive editions”, explains Gago, for whom the analysis of aquatic biotoxins faces important challenges “marked by the transition from animal bioassays to quantitative chemical methods with high sensitivity and confirmation capacity”.
From the Department of Analytical and Food Chemistry of the University of Vigo and also from the European Union Reference Laboratory for Marine Biotoxins, Ana Gago works with her team of researchers from both centers in the development of sensitive and selective analytical methodologies for existing marine biotoxins “and also for new toxins emerging on European coasts, contributing to their harmonization at European and global level.”
The opening table with Ana Gago, Emilio Fernández and José Antonio Rodríguez
Advances in ciguatera food poisoning research
In the symposium that began today in Baiona, the researcher from the Department of Analytical and Food Chemistry Pablo Estevez presents in this afternoon’s session the advances that the group is making within the international project Risk characterization of ciguatera food poisoning in Europe, endowed with one million euros and which for four years will be responsible for determining the real incidence of ciguatera poisoning, caused by the consumption of fish that contain ciguatoxin, marine biotoxins that would be present in tropical or warm water species that feed on algae or toxic dinoflagellates (Gambierdiscus toxicus). The University of Vigo, through the Department of Analytical and Food Chemistry, is one of the European institutions participating in this project, led by the European Food Safety Agency, EFSA, together with the Spanish Agency for Consumption, Food Safety and Nutrition, Aecosan and in which 13 scientific institutions from Spain, Portugal, France, Germany, Greece and Cyprus participate.
The team led by Gago has been collaborating since the appearance of the problem in 2008 with the Canary Islands public health authorities, as well as with the German administration for the detection of ciguatoxins in samples of fish imported from the Indian Ocean, but participating in a European project focused on the evaluation and characterization of an emerging risk “represents a significant challenge for a research group, as it is a risk of a food contaminant of marine origin and even marks an important milestone in a department like ours in which food analysis plays a very important role”, points out the researcher.
Source: duvi
