Over the last century and recent decades, the Eastern Mediterranean have warmed faster than most other inhabited regions. In the marine environment, marine heatwaves are known to result in dramatic loss of native species. Further, marine pollutants, like heavy metals and litter, are additional stressors which can be transported from sediment/water column and bio-accumulate in food webs with direct impact on aquatic organisms and humans. Effective management and policymaking are therefore required for the conservation of regional biota. However, Cyprus still lacks capacities and knowledge in the Environment sector, through prioritised in the recently updated Smart Specialisation Strategy for Cyprus. Thus, PUREEF-Y aims at enhancing the progress of the coordinating partner – CMMI, a H2020 Teaming Centre of excellence– towards scientific excellence and policymaking influence by deploying efficient and long-term capacity-building and networking activities with two internationally recognised advanced partners from Israel and Spain. The activities will go beyond the strictly scientific scope and support the mutual development, consolidation, and reinforcement of administrative, dissemination, networking and policy-making competencies. The progress achieved will be demonstrated via a joint research project during which partners will perform baseline assessments of the physicochemical parameters collected from coastal sediments and waters likely to be affected by climate change and ocean acidification; marine pollution levels in key sites around Cyprus, and the health status of key shallow water benthic and planktonic habitats. Over 3 years, PUREEF-Y will result in a long-term linkage between CMMI, UAB and IOLR who share the mission of better understanding past (paleo) and present ecological conditions and designing management plans for monitoring, conservation & restoration, and policy reforms for the future.

A healthy, balanced diet has a fundamental role in preventing a large range of chronic diseases and contributes to prolong life quality with obvious benefits for the individual as well as for the society. Aquaculture production plays a substantial role in this perspective because fish is an important source of well-balanced proteins and important nutrients such as marine-derived omega-3 fatty acids. However, its sustainability generates concerns as farmed fish diet is largely based on fishmeal and fish oil. Consumer and environmental groups demand a continued move towards alternative feeds. Objective of this project is to develop a next generation 3D culture platform that accurately mimics the complex functions of the intestinal mucosa. Its purpose is to make available a technology for predicting the health and nutritional value of innovative components of aquafeeds. Current methods are lengthy, expensive and requires the use of large number of animals. Furthermore, they do not provide the knowledge of the cellular and molecular mechanisms determining the final effect of each meal on the fish. This lack of mechanistic knowledge severely limits our capacity to understand and predict the biological value of the single raw material and of their different combinations. We propose to develop new ad hoc biomaterials to create a 3D scaffold where to grow and differentiate a complete population of intestinal epithelial cells. Combining state of the art notions on fish nutrition will lead to a fully functional prototype of artificial intestine (Fish-AI) that will enable the feed industry to predict accurately and efficiently the health and nutritional value of alternative feed sources substantially improving European aquaculture sustainability and competitiveness. The project fosters cross-fertilisation and synergy among nutrition physiology, bioengineering, cell and stem cell biology to develop innovative technologies for a sustainable livestock production.

Aquaculture is an important source for food, nutrition, income and livelihoods for millions of people around the globe. Intensive fish farming is often associated with pathogen outbreaks and therefore high amounts of veterinary drugs are used worldwide. As in many other environments, mostly application of antimicrobials triggers the development of (multi)resistant microbiota. This process might be fostered by co-selection as a consequence of the additional use of antiparasitics. Usage of antimicrobials in aquaculture does not only affect the cultured fish species, but - to a so far unknown extent - also aquatic ecosystems connected to fish farms including microbiota from water and sediment as well as its eukaryotes. Effects include increases in the number of (multi)resistant microbes, as well as complete shifts in microbial community structure and function. This dysbiosis might have pronounced consequences for the functioning of aquatic ecosystems. Thus in the frame of this project we want to study consequences of antimicrobial/-parastic application in aquaculture for the cultured fish species as well as for the aquatic environments. To consider the variability of aquaculture practices worldwide four showcases representing typical systems from the tropics, the Mediterranean and the temperate zone will be studied including freshwater and marine environments. For one showcase a targeted mitigation approach to reduce the impact on aquatic ecosystems will be tested.

The objective of BLUES is to expand the potential to produce valuable and unique bioactive compounds from marine invertebrates by developing novel cultivation systems of cell lines from 4 phyla of marine invertebrates (Porifera, Cnidaria, Echinodermata, Chordata) and optimizing production yield as an alternative to wild harvesting. For many years, research has been done to derive continuous cell lines from invertebrates. Only recently, BLUES partners reached a breakthrough and created the first continuous marine sponge cell line. Results demonstrated that sponge cells of several species can divide extremely rapidly. The ambition is to design the pathway towards industrial bioprocesses using marine invertebrate cell lines of different phyla as a chassis towards the production of unique high-value marine bio-based compounds, an environmentally sustainable alternative to wild harvesting. The novel bioprocesses that will be developed are not only an alternative for wild harvesting, solving the stock production bottleneck for increased availability of the bioactive compounds, but also for a higher level of sustainable alternative, contributing to the development of circular processing and circular economy. The technology that will be developed in BLUES will make it possible that valuable marine-natural products are produced in bioprocesses and with that contribute to the Blue Bioeconomy.