Roadmap for development of disease control strategies for bTB

What are we trying to achieve and why? What is the problem we are trying to solve?

• To develop biosignatures (combination of biomarkers) that could inform on the latent/carrier status of an animal and evaluate the risk of Mb shedding and transmission .
• Development of tools to identify animals at risk to transmit for targeted elimination to end massive herd culling

What are the scientific and technological challenges (knowledge gaps needing to be addressed)?

• We need to understand the different clinical states of TB in cattle akin to what is now established for human TB
• We need to develop easy and affordable tools to identify biosignatures
• We need to identify a biosignature in circulating blood (the easiest and less invasive procedures for sampling large numbers of animals)

What approaches could/should be taken to address the research question?

We need to embrace the One Health approach and work together with human TB specialists

What else needs to be done before we can solve this need?

We need to establish robust pipelines with all stakeholders including bTB surveillance programs- to ensure rigorous and longitudinal follow-up of animals in the field

Existing knowledge including successes and failures