-NCTC-

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 is one of four culture collections that constitute the Health Protection Agency Culture Collections (HPA Culture Collections) a not-for-profit organization within the Health Protection Agency (HPA) and works closely with internationally renowned experts in the HPA’s bacterial reference laboratories. 

NCTC’s public access collection comprises over 5,000 bacterial strains, together with over 100 mycoplasmas, including Risk Group 3 micro-organisms, spanning diverse clinical infections, global locations and pathogenic properties.  In addition to the public access collection, NCTC holds a number of historic archive bacterial collections.

NCTC is one of the four collections of the Culture Collections of Public Health England.

• 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