Studying bovine TB in 3D

Abstract

Bovine tuberculosis (BTB), primarily caused by Mycobacterium bovis, is an important animal health and economic problem for the cattle industry and a potential zoonotic threat. Large animal models present practical and ethical limitations, calling for alternative experimental models to study BTB pathogenesis and identify therapies. In a new study in Communications Biology, researchers from the National Institute of Animal Biotechnology in Hyderabad report the development of an ex vivo bovine pulmosphere model that recapitulates TB infection, including host responses during the early stage of infection. The pulmospheres, created from primary lung cells isolated from cattle lung tissue from slaughterhouses, encompassed macrophages, epithelial cells, fibroblasts, alveolar cells and other immune cells together with diverse extracellular matrix components. Transcriptomic and proteomic analyses revealed that infection with M. bovis BCG, an attenuated vaccine strain, and M. tuberculosis H37Rv, a laboratory-adapted human clinical strain, upregulated key host pathways in the pulmospheres, but with pathogen-specific variations. This new bovine 3D pulmosphere model could have important implications for biomarker discovery, drug screening and TB control strategies.

Original reference: Bhaskar, V. et al. Commun. Biol. 8, 559 (2025)