Preventing mastitis in canadian dairy cattle while reducing industry reliance on antibiotics

牛乳腺炎是一种常见于奶牛的细菌感染。这种疾病对奶牛来说是痛苦的，每年给加拿大乳制品行业造成6.65亿美元的损失，并导致大量抗生素的使用。由于抗生素耐药性人类感染的数量不断增加，抗生素在农业中的使用正变得有争议和不可持续;然而，由于牛乳腺炎的流行率增加，彻底禁止在奶牛养殖中使用抗生素将造成灾难性和不可持续的损失。在这个项目中，我们将与两个工业合作伙伴合作开发一种局部益生菌溶液，可应用于牛乳头，以引入健康的微生物组并减少病原体定植的可能性。该项目将填补重要的知识空白，包括健康乳头微生物组的最佳组成，病原体和共生体如何在乳头环境中相互作用，乳头共生体是否可以抑制病原体定植，以及我们是否可以可靠地操纵牛乳头微生物组。我们将通过开展基于培养的工作来实现这一目标，该工作建立在我的实验室已经完成的非培养工作的基础上并对其进行补充-该工作已经确定了特别健康和乳腺炎抗性奶牛微生物组中存在的可能的病原体拮抗剂。我们将通过与利拉伐一起优化该产品来确保该产品能够有效预防乳腺炎，并通过与奶农交流我们的研究结果并通过安大略奶农获得反馈来满足奶农的需求。在该项目结束时，我们的目标是开发出一种益生菌乳头药浴剂，可用于预防牛乳腺炎的临床有效性测试。

Bovine mastitis is a bacterial infection that is common in dairy cattle. This disease is painful for cows, costs $665 million in losses annually for the Canadian dairy industry, and results in the use of large quantities of antibiotics. Antibiotic use in agriculture is becoming controversial and unsustainable due to the rising numbers of antibiotic resistant human infections; however, outright prohibition of antibiotic use in dairy farming would cause catastrophic and unsustainable losses due to the increased prevalence of bovine mastitis. In this project, we will partner with with two industrial partners to develop a topical probiotic solution that can be applied to the bovine teat to introduce a healthy microbiome and reduce the potential of pathogen colonization. This project will fill important knowledge gaps including the optimal composition of a healthy teat microbiome, how pathogens and symbionts interact in the teat environment, if teat symbionts can inhibit pathogen colonization, and if we can reliably manipulate the bovine teat microbiome. We will accomplish this by conducting culture based work that builds on and complements culture-independent work already completed in my laboratory - which has identified possible pathogen antagonists present in the microbiome of particularly healthy, and mastitis resistant, dairy cattle. We will ensure that this product is both effective at preventing mastitis by optimizing it with DeLaval, and that it meets the needs of dairy farmers by communicating our findings with them and receiving feed back via Dairy Farmers of Ontario. At the end of this project we aim to have a developed probiotic teat dip that is ready for clinical efficacy testing for preventing bovine mastitis.