« DRIBA », project by VETOPHAGE, Molsid and École normale supérieure de Lyon, funded by Région Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes with the support of Bpifrance, will develop the first kit for the detection of the pathogenic bacterium S.aureus and of the presence of antibiotic resistance for bovine mastitis.
Bovine mastitis, a bacterial infection of cows’ udders, affects 40% of the 3.7 million dairy cows in France each year. In addition, 33% of sick cows are also resistant to certain antibiotics. This infection induces a loss of industrial exploitation of more than 30% of the milk produced.
The rapid identification of the bacteria responsible for the infection and the presence of antibiotic resistance are essential to decide on the most appropriate antibiotic treatment. No appropriate diagnostic solution does exist at the moment.
VETOPHAGE is the first French company to develop kits for the rapid detection of bacteria using phage technologies: first target is Staphylococcus aureus (S.aureus), the bacterium most frequently encountered in veterinary pathology.
Molsid is a leader in the development of innovative molecular fluorogenic probes and phenotypic diagnostic kits for antibiotic resistance, in collaboration with the École normale supérieure de Lyon – Chemistry Laboratory.
The combination of these 3 innovative partners will make it possible to develop a kit for the simultaneous detection of the bacterium S.aureus and its resistance to Penicillin in a few minutes.
Thanks to the kits which rapidly detect S.aureus & possible antibiotic resistance directly on farms, antibiotics will be selected with more efficiency and treatment will be better as it can commence much earlier. The objective is to reduce the additional costs linked to the treatment of bovine mastitis by 30% within 5 years, i.e. 210 to 340 million €/year in France.
