Translation of Bovine Tuberculosis biomarkers to the Point of care setting.

Bovine tuberculosis (M. bovis) remains a major disease of cattle in the United Kingdom. The diagnosis and management of infected herds represents a significant burden to the UK taxpayer as bovine tuberculosis is a notifiable disease. Current testing regimens are laborious and time consuming, with blood samples needing to be transported to centralised testing facilities, where analysis and the reporting of findings can take a number of days. This makes rapid responses to infection difficult and costly. Within this project we propose the development and validation of a number of blood based biological markers which will subsequently be incorporated into a point of care device that can be used to rapidly obtain test results in the field. Such a device would have mobile phone/internet and global positioning system capabilities allowing results of tests conducted at a remote location to be uploaded rapidly to websites that communicate with regulatory authorities and facilitate herd management.