National Reference Centre for Mycobacteriology

The National Reference Centre for Mycobacteriology (NRCM) program mandate is to provide diagnostic, reference and surveillance services to clients and health care providers for the genus Mycobacterium, including Mycobacterium tuberculosis. These services are used in the investigation, control, and prevention of human disease within the population. The NRCM maintains a national genotyping (MIRU-VNTR) database and with recent whole genome sequencing advances, hopes to build and maintain a national MTBC genomic database in the future. Strain typing acts to support standard tuberculosis epidemiology, such as contact tracing, for tuberculosis outbreak investigation, prevention, and control. The department also offers teaching programs for medical infectious disease physicians, graduate and undergraduate students, and visiting scientists. The scope of the NRCM includes mycobacterium detection and identification services, susceptibility testing services, genotyping services, training and applied research activities. The NRCM also provides diagnostic tests for the identification and antimicrobial susceptibility testing of aerobic actinomycetes (e.g. Nocardia spp., Gordonia spp., Streptomyces spp., Actinomadura spp., Nocardiopsis spp., Tsukamurella spp., Rhodococcus spp).

The NRCM provides two national quality assurance programs. Our culture based proficiency program ensures the quality of provincial laboratory diagnostics and technologies for mycobacterial diseases. Our GeneXpert Proficiency Panel (GX-TB) ensures the quality of Cepheid Xpert MTB/RIF Ultra® assay used on the GeneXpert® system and is available to any laboratory, hospital, clinic, or nursing station. The panel is shipped twice a year. Participants are evaluated on the detection of mycobacterium tuberculosis complex (MTB) DNA and the detection of mutations leading to rifampin (RIF) resistance.