-NCTC-

Members holdings

Group(s) of biological resources stored in the collection: bacteria, archaea, cyanobacteria, bacterial genomic DNA, bacteriophage.

Founded in 1920, NCTC - the National Collection of Type Cultures is the longest-established collection in the world offering a bacterial culture supply service, specialising in micro-organisms of significance for human health.  NCTC’s public access collection comprises over 6,000 bacterial strains, including Hazard Group 3 micro-organisms, spanning diverse clinical infections, global locations and pathogenic properties.  NCTC also supplies DNA and bacteriophage. In addition to the public access collection, NCTC holds a number of historic archive bacterial collections.

NCTC is one of the four collections (ECACC, NCTC, NCPV and NCPF) of the Culture Collections of the UK Health Security Agency.

Services offered

  • Supply of freeze-dried cultures
  • Supply of quantitative bacterial Reference Materials in LENTICULE disc format
  • Preservation of bacteria by freeze drying
  • International Deposit Authority (IDA) for the deposit of biological material under the Budapest Treaty
  • Deposit of strains for public access or for safekeeping

    • Research

    Evolutionary origins of modern pathogens; development of novel reference materials.

    Quality Management System

  • NCTC have a quality management system in place that has been externally assessed to the international standard ISO 9001:2015.
  • NCTC Quality Control testing methods are accredited in accordance with the recognised International Standard to ISO/IEC 17025:2017 General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories.