Research funding council BBSRC has announced £7 million funding for projects to combat bovine tuberculosis in the UK.

BBSRC made the announcement at a meeting in London on Tuesday. The Council said the "devastating cattle disease… is one of the biggest challenges facing cattle farming."

The research council said the work its allocation will fund will be part of the 'one-health' approach to tackling disease; utilising advances in human TB research to provide insights into bTB, and vice versa.

£5m of the grant will go to scientists study three main bioscience themes; bTB vaccinology, the diversity of bTB strains, and interactions between the bTB pathogen and its hosts. Defra will also provide up to £1M of research funding as part of the programme.

£2m will be made available for scientists to develop non-animal models to accelerate bTB research, thereby reducing reliance on research animals. This part of the project will be collaboration with NC3Rs.

Professor Jackie Hunter, BBSRC Chief Executive, commented on Monday, "We need to inject more basic bioscience research into the fight against bTB. BBSRC asked the community where the gaps in our knowledge were and it was clear from the responses that it is the fundamental understanding of the disease that needs to be improved.

"This funding will help explore the mechanisms whereby immunisation with vaccine induces immune protection in cattle, increase our understanding of the diversity of different bTB strains, and examine specific host-pathogen interactions."

Defra's Chief Scientific Advisor Ian Boyd welcomed the research. He said, "Fundamental research on bovine TB is essential… We are encouraged to see AHVLA, as the UK's leading bTB research laboratory, spearheading this new initiative with cutting edge academia to develop the next generation of tools to combat Bovine Tuberculosis."

Scientists from the Universities of Warwick and Cambridge who built up the first national model of bTB infection have said that the government's efforts to tackle the disease may be misguided. The scientists said infected cattle missed by testing are the key element in spreading bovine TB, not badgers, as support for the government's controversial badger cull continues to decline.

The researchers, who were also funded by BBSRC, built up models of the disease's spread between 1996 and 2011. Publishing their findings in the journal Nature last week, they warned that bTB mainly spreads through failed cattle infection tests, cattle movement and re-infection from environmental reservoirs, including infected pastures and wildlife.

However, the government has dismissed the researchers' findings in light of the radical recommendations they made on methods of controlling the disease in England.