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

牛乳房炎是一种在奶牛中常见的细菌感染。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。由于抗药性人类感染人数的增加，抗生素在农业中的使用正变得有争议和不可持续；然而，由于牛乳房炎发病率的增加，彻底禁止在奶牛养殖场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，该溶液可应用于牛乳头，以引入健康的微生物群，并降低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群的最佳组成，病原体和共生菌在乳头环境中如何相互作用，乳头共生菌是否能抑制病原体定植，以及我们是否能可靠地操纵牛乳头微生物群。我们将通过进行基于培养的工作来实现这一点，该工作建立在并补充我的实验室已经完成的独立于培养的工作，该工作已经确定了特别健康和耐乳房炎的奶牛的微生物群中可能存在的病原体拮抗剂。我们将通过利拉伐对该产品进行优化，确保该产品在预防乳房炎方面是有效的，并通过与他们交流我们的发现并通过安大略省奶农收到反馈来满足奶农的需求。在这个项目结束时，我们的目标是开发出一种益生菌乳头浸泡，准备用于预防奶牛乳房炎的临床疗效测试。

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.