• Background

  Mastitis is a highly prevalent disease in dairy cattle affecting the world’s dairy industry by reducing milk quality, milk yield, increasing treatment costs, hampering animal reproductive performance and raising greenhouse gas production. It also causes pain, suffering and general stress to the animals. Mastitis is usually caused by bacterial invasion of the teat canal, but also as a result of injury to the cow's udder.

  Currently, bovine mastitis is predominantly treated with antibiotics. However, antibiotic use is under scrutiny due to the development of antimicrobial resistance and presence of residues in milk. According to World Health Organisation WHO “Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today.

  It is predicted, that antibiotic resistance could be responsible for 10 million deaths each year globally by 2050, if there are no policies in place to reduce antimicrobial use.

• Goal

  Our idea is to replace antibiotics and other harsh antimicrobials with natural antimicrobial peptides: bacteriocins and bacteriolytic enzymes. In contrast to antibiotics they normally target only selected bacterial species/genera and as such do not harm a natural microflora.

  As natural peptidic substances, bacteriocins and bacteriolytic enzymes are biodegradable and do not contaminate environment, in contrast to antibiotics and various antiseptics.

  We plan to develop a novel strategy to prevent and treat mastitis and skin infections; very common infections in animals and humans, respectively.

• Partners

  The project is a partnership between the academia and the private sector. The international project consortium is composed by the MMRC, Mossakowski Medical Research Centre, PAS (Poland); NMBU, Norwegian University of Life Science (Norway) and Tine (Norway).

  This collaborative effort aims at developing novel technologies and strategies to reduce the use of antibiotics in animals and humans, but also to rise awareness among the general public of the risks of antibiotic misuse and antimicrobial resistance through dissemination in social platforms.
• Publications

  • Ubericin K, a New Pore-Forming Bacteriocin Targeting mannose PTS
    • T. F. Oftedal, K. V. Ovchinnikov, K. A. Hestad, O. Goldbeck, D. Porcellato, J. Narvhus, et al. Microbiol Spectr 2021 Vol. 9 Issue 2 Pages e0029921

  • • Identification of a Novel Two-Peptide Lantibiotic from Vagococcus fluvialis
      • Z. Rosenbergova, T. F. Oftedal, K. V. Ovchinnikov, T. Thiyagarajah, M. Rebros and D. B. Diep Microbiol Spectr 2022 Vol. 10 Issue 4 Pages e0095422

Participants