Kit cuts pathogen detection time down to hours

Scientists who claim to have developed what they say is the fastest food detector of its kind have received funding to mass produce their discovery.

Scotland’s Macaulay Institute said this week the scientists plan to roll out technology by 2010 which will cut detection times for food pathogens such as Campylobacter, Listeria, and Salmonella to five hours from six days. Foodproduction.com reports that cutting pathogen detection time is one of the holy grails of food microbiology. Brining down detection times to hours can help managers prevent contaminated foods from reaching consumers. Brajesh Singh, who leads the project at the Institute, said the new technology could prevent many food poisoning outbreaks. “The conventional methods for detecting food contamination used by industries and regulatory agencies are labour intensive, time consuming and costly,” he stated. “Our proposed technology offers for the first time, at low cost, the simultaneous detection of multiple contaminants within five to eight hours, and has the potential to revolutionise the food safety industry and save lives through prevention of food poisoning epidemics.”

Seeded with £246,000 from the Scottish Enterprise’s Proof of Concept program, the scientists aim is sell the detection kit worldwide by 2010 via a spin-out company. The new company will also provide food sample analysis services and develop other similar technologies. The test kit works by analyzing a food sample for specific food pathogens, the Macaulay Institute stated. The kit can be used to detect multiple microbial contaminants in food, water and environmental samples. “This unique method allows dual detection of pathogens and determines if they are capable of producing toxins or whether they have antibiotic resistance,” the institute added. “It offers improved diagnostic potential to identify the source of contamination and therefore save lives.”

Singh stated that the device is sensitive enough accurately to determine the level of contamination — which is a limitation of present methodologies. “We believe that this technology provides a real opportunity to make Scotland a world-leader in microbial diagnostics and industrial microbiology,” he stated. The new company will initially focus on contaminant detection in food and the environment, but the kit has wider applications and will be attractive to healthcare, forensic, and remediation industries, he noted. “The project will allow Scotland to compete with North America and Continental Europe in this growing market, which estimates suggest will be worth $2.4 billion by 2010 for the food sector alone,” he stated.

The scientists will used the funding to develop a proof of concept, then, once the technology is adjusted, it will be licensed to a range of industries or service providers in microbial diagnostics. The detection technology will also be marketed through a spin-off company that will manufacture the necessary kits and create a service center for the United Kingdom.