Creating Antibodies to Enable the Study of Mycobacterium Tuberculosis Infections in Guinea Pigs

Tuberculosis is a persistent infectious disease that threatens the health of people and numerous mammalian species throughout the worldMonitoring of Mycobacterium tuberculosisMtbinfections in animal models has often relied on host mortalitybacterial loadsand qualitative assessment of pathology at necropsyThese are blunt toolslargely unrelated to the markers used for diagnosis and epidemiological studies of human TBThe next generation of modeling requires matching the model and analysis to the specific research questions being askedThe lack of immunological reagents in most animal models severely limits our ability to address these questions through biomarker assessment in models more relevant than the mouse yet less expensive than non human primatesWe propose to generate reagents needed to elucidate and correlate immunological markers of tuberculosisTBtransmission and disease development in the guinea pigThusassessing tuberculosis disease stages in a relevant small mammalian model with the aid of crucial immunological reagents will greatly aid efforts into ultimately enhancing the effectiveness of current TB control efforts including a better understanding basic TB disease parameters in naturally infected mammalian models