The Basque company Vacunek has launched its new PathoProofTM (Finnzymes) product onto the Spanish market, an assay kit to detect the 11 most prevalent pathogens in bovine mastitis and the β-lactamase penicillin resistance gene. Mastitis is an inflammation of the mammary gland that causes substantial economic losses in dairy herds. Consequently, fast detection and suitable monitoring is needed in order to minimise its negative effects.

The Vacunek method enables the identification in less than 4 hours, with high sensitivity and specificity, of the 4 main bacteria that cause mastitis: S. aureus, coagulase-negative staphylococci, S. agalactiae, S. dysgalactiae, S. uberis, E. coli, C. bovis, A. pyogenes and/or P. indolicus, S. marcescens and the Enterococcus and Klebsiella species. Moreover, it is possible to detect the presence of antibiotic resistance genes, enabling the most suitable treatment to be established quickly.

Vacunek is cooperating with the Animal Health Laboratory of the Neiker-Tecnalia technology centre for its introduction as an innovative diagnosis method for individual and bulk bovine milk samples.

The assay kit is optimised for use with even the most challenging milk samples from cows with clinical or subclinical mastitis, and is part of the company’s own range of PCR-based (Polymerase Chain Reaction) products, a real-time molecular biology technique that makes it possible to complement or replace bacterial culturing and carry out fast diagnosis. The assay can be used with azidiol- and bronopol-preserved milk samples and provides reliable results in most samples that resist bacterial culturing, making it especially useful for large-scale milk testing.

Vacunek is a biotechnology company, a Neiker-Tecnalia spin-off, created in May 2006. Its activity focuses on the commercialisation of new tools and technologies to improve the productivity of livestock farms through research and development into a new range of vaccines against paratuberculosis and development of molecular diagnostic tools. The goal is to contain quickly possible infectious disease and to prevent risks to the human population as well as economic losses to farmers.