Innovative rapid culture media to aid control of bovine tuberculosis

Bovine tuberculosis (bTB) caused by Mycobacterium bovis is the most pressing animal health problem in the UK. 8.4 million tests for bTB were carried out in the UK leading to slaughter of 32,000 animals. Unfortunately the current diagnosis is reliant on culture of a woefully slow growing organism in conventional media that has not been improved upon for more than 50 years. Our new supplements have excellent potential to significantly reduce the time to diagnosis, massively increase effectiveness of herd screening and positively influence eradication and control programmes for bTB in the UK. We have previously shown that our approach can halve the time for growth of Mycobacterium tuberculosis from human samples. We now wish to adapt and optimise our supplement for bTB and have already preliminary data to show that this will be possible. The project proposes to extensively screen our innovative (and patented) bank of supplements to maximize enhanced growth of bTB in laboratory cultures. We propose in collaboration with AHVLA, to test clinical and environmental samples from cattle and badgers using our supplements and compare against current methods. We will then seek to market this product worldwide.