Fayetteville, AR – BioDetection Instruments, LLC has received a $150,000 Phase I Small Business Technology Transfer award from the National Science Foundation. The project will demonstrate the feasibility of an innovative biosensor system for rapid and sensitive detection of viable foodborne pathogens.

Current practices for ensuring food safety rely upon rapid identification and effective control of specific pathogens from farm to fork. However, the detection of viable food pathogens still relies on the conventional cell growth based methods, which are tedious and require at least 24 hours. Currently available rapid methods such as ELISA, PCR and most of the reported biosensors are unable to distinguish viable from dead cells, and that limitation may have significant consequences for the food processing industry. Part of the challenge that faces the regulatory agencies and industry, charged with protecting public health, is to find better, cost-effective, rapid technologies for the detection of specific pathogens, specifically for on-line, real time detection of viable pathogens. BioDetection Instruments' technology will allow on-site, real-time analysis of food products for the presence of viable foodborne pathogens and will be a significant step forward in process monitoring and quality control. This technology will be valuable to the commercial sector for routine analysis and to the governmental sector to monitor for and trace the source of accidental or intentional contamination of the food supply.

Dr. Yanbin Li, Chief Technology Officer of BioDetection Instruments, explains, "Currently pre-enrichment of samples is required in microbial detection to differentiate live and dead cells of foodborne pathogens, which usually need at least 6 to 8 hours. The National Science Foundation award will be used by BioDetection Instruments to demonstrate a new biosensor design that is able to quantitatively detect viable pathogenic bacteria such as E. coli O157:H7, Salmonella Typhimurium and Listeria monocytogens in a food sample within 1 to 2 hours. This technology can be applied to on-line monitoring microbial contamination of processed food products, specifically ready-to-eat food products."