Advanced antimicrobial design

Tackling Piscirickettsia salmonis in salmon farming through molecular screening and iterative microbiological validation

The Challenge

Piscirickettsia salmonis is a facultative intracellular pathogen associated with severe systemic disease in salmonids. Its persistence, intracellular adaptation, and growth under controlled conditions require antimicrobial strategies that do more than inhibit bacterial expansion: they must distinguish bacteriostatic and bactericidal activity through quantifiable parameters.

The working hypothesis

Faced with a pathogen of this complexity, the scientific question is whether natural-origin formulations can produce a measurable and reproducible antimicrobial signal. The difficulty lies in finding that signal among thousands of chemical possibilities, separating real activity from experimental noise, and turning natural potential into a quantifiable formulation.

Our Solution

CORAL AI can analyze and understand candidates in a computational environment before moving into the laboratory, identifying which profiles are most likely to produce the desired effect. The system connects molecular information, possible formulations, and biological objectives to prioritize promising profiles and focus experimental validation on the strongest options. In this way, the laboratory does not start from trial and error; it confirms candidates selected through computational evidence.

Independent validation

The experiments were executed independently by Universidad Austral de Chile, evaluating how each formulation affected planktonic growth of the LF89 PS011 reference isolate of P. salmonis.

Learning and Validation Process

Measurable Impact

• Identification of formulations with bactericidal activity defined by an MBC of 125 µg/mL.
• Reduction of the inhibitory concentration to 8.03 µg/mL in the best-performing formulation.
• Construction of a decision matrix that separates bactericidal candidates and low-MIC bacteriostatic formulations with optimization potential.

The Future of Natural Formulation Discovery

This project demonstrates a new way to develop natural formulations with scientific rigor and industrial speed. By integrating molecular discovery with quantitative microbiology, each round stops being an isolated test and becomes actionable evidence: inhibition, lethality, and potency data that guide the next formulation. The result is a sharper pipeline, with lower experimental uncertainty and greater capacity to turn natural candidates into real antimicrobial solutions.