Development of a rapid cow-side bacteriophage-based diagnostic method for the detection of Staphylococcus aureus mastitis

牛乳房炎是乳房的一种炎症性疾病，通常由奶牛的细菌感染引起。引起牛乳房炎的最难对付的细菌之一是金黄色葡萄球菌。这种情况具有严重的经济和社会影响。由于兽医和劳动力成本增加以及牛奶产量和质量下降等因素而产生的间接和直接成本造成了经济损失。由于对公共卫生造成压力，农场过度使用抗生素，导致抗菌素耐药性问题增加，对人类健康和农业产生负面影响。目前的诊断和治疗方法需要改进，因为这些方法并不总是简单的。在治疗方面，由于很多时候导致感染的细菌菌株难以确定，因此使用了强大的广谱抗生素，从长远来看，这增加了严重的耐药性问题，即细菌病原体对抗生素的耐药性，对公众健康构成威胁。因此，迫切需要建立一种奶牛乳房炎快速检测方法，为金黄色葡萄球菌乳房炎的控制和治疗提供根本性的改变。我们将重点关注金黄色葡萄球菌感染的检测，为此，我们将使用针对金黄色葡萄球菌的特异性噬菌体作为诊断方法的基础。噬菌体是一种对其细菌宿主具有高度专一性的病毒。我们将对这些噬菌体进行基因改造，使其产生生物发光，以便在测试样本中存在金黄色葡萄球菌的情况下，产生发光。我们将进一步喷雾干燥这些噬菌体，将其转化为粉末，可以很容易地分配到单独的小瓶中，形成诊断测试的基础。生物发光噬菌体将得到优化，并将在现场进一步测试，使用来自奶牛的液体和粉末形式的生物样本，以确保其准确性和敏感度。总之，我们的目标是开发一种基于牛侧噬菌体的金黄色葡萄球菌牛乳房炎的快速诊断方法。

Bovine mastitis is an inflammatory condition of the udder, typically caused by bacterial infections in dairy cattle. One of the hardest bacterial pathogens to tackle, responsible for bovine mastitis, is Staphylococcus aureus. This condition has severe economic and societal implications. Economic due to both indirect and direct costs that arise from factors including increased veterinary and labour costs and reduced milk yield and quality. Societal, due to the strains placed on public health, with the overuse of antibiotics in farms, which results to increase in the problem of antimicrobial resistance with negative effects in human health and agriculture. The current methods of diagnosis and treatment require improvement, as these are not always straightforward. In terms of the treatment and because many times the bacterial strain responsible for the infection is hard to be determined, strong broad-spectrum antibiotics are used, which in the long run increase the serious problem of antimicrobial resistance, that is the resistance of bacterial pathogens to antibiotics, posing threats on the public health.It is therefore an urgent need to develop a rapid cow-side test for Bovine mastitis, which would provide a fundamental change in the control and treatment of S. aureus mastitis. We will focus on the detection of infection caused by Staphylococcus aureus.For this purpose, we will use bacteriophages, specific for targeting Staphylococcus aureus, as the basis of the diagnostic method. Bacteriophages are viruses with great specificity to their bacterial host. We will genetically modify these bacteriophages to be made bioluminescent, so that in the presence of Staphylococcus aureus in the samples tested, luminescence will be produced. We will further spray dry these phages to convert those into a powder, which can be easily distributed to individual vials and form the basis of the diagnostic test. The bioluminescent bacteriophages will be optimised and will be further be tested in the field, using biological samples from cows, both in their liquid and powder format, in order to ensure their accuracy and sensitivity. Overall, we aim to develop a rapid cow-side bacteriophage-based diagnostic method for Staphylococcus aureus bovine mastitis.