SBIR Phase I: Detection of Ecoli O157:H7 in Ground Beef

SBIR 第一阶段：碎牛肉中大肠杆菌 O157:H7 的检测

• 批准号: 2015056
• 负责人: Javier Atencia
• 金额: $ 22.49万
• 依托单位: PATHOTRAK INC.
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2020-05-15 至 2021-04-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2015056&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: SBIR; Phase; Detection; Ecoli; O157

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to enable the reliable detection of food-borne pathogens in meats in 4 hours. The time savings will dramatically reduce holding costs for food manufacturers and bring food to consumers one day earlier through an improved food-safety test. The proposed technology will address the major bottleneck for rapid bacterial detection in food samples, which is not detection itself but rather the sample preparation step known as bacterial enrichment. In this step, the sample is incubated for 20 or more hours to allow the bacteria to multiply and reach detectable levels. Bacterial enrichment has been dubbed 'the 100-year problem in food-safety and microbiology,' and there is currently no alternative. The proposed project will enable food-safety monitoring tests at a lower cost, improving food safety, saving billions of dollars in recalls, and reducing holding costs of food production. Moreover, getting ground beef to retailers’ shelves a day earlier can reduce food waste in ground beef by an estimated 50%. Because beef is so energy-intensive to produce, this waste reduction would save trillions of gallons of water and prevent the release of billions of pounds of methane and greenhouse gases every year.This SBIR Phase I project proposes to explore translation of a unique microfiltration-based enrichment technology to separate and concentrate pathogens from ground beef. This will enable the detection of a single pathogenic bacterium in 4 hours, with a limit of detection consistent with regulatory guidelines. The proposed technology combines washing, microfiltration and sedimentation with the addition of chemical agents to separate and concentrate the bacteria from the sample. The research plan includes optimizing the conditions and chemicals to stabilize and subsequently digest protein aggregates in solution that are deleterious to the concentration of the bacteria; demonstrating the technical feasibility by consistently and reliably detecting 1 Colony Forming Unit (CFU) in 375 g of ground beef; and exploring the performance-cost trade space.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目的更广泛的影响/商业潜力是能够在4小时内可靠地检测到肉类中的食源性病原体。节省的时间将极大地降低食品制造商的持有成本，并通过改进的食品安全测试提前一天将食品送到消费者手中。这项拟议的技术将解决食品样品中细菌快速检测的主要瓶颈，即不是检测本身，而是被称为细菌浓缩的样品准备步骤。在这一步骤中，样本被孵化20个小时或更长时间，以使细菌繁殖并达到可检测到的水平。细菌浓缩被称为食品安全和微生物学的百年难题，目前别无选择。拟议中的项目将以更低的成本进行食品安全监测测试，改善食品安全，节省数十亿美元的召回费用，并降低食品生产的持有成本。此外，将碎牛肉提前一天上架可以将碎牛肉中的食物浪费减少约50%。由于牛肉的生产非常耗能，这种废物减少将节省数万亿加仑的水，并每年防止释放数十亿磅的甲烷和温室气体。这个SBIR第一阶段项目建议探索一种独特的基于微过滤的浓缩技术，以从碎牛肉中分离和浓缩病原体。这将使在4小时内检测到一种致病细菌，检测的限度与监管指南一致。建议的技术结合了洗涤、微滤和沉淀以及添加化学试剂来从样本中分离和浓缩细菌。该研究计划包括优化条件和化学物质，以稳定并随后消化溶液中有害细菌浓度的蛋白质聚集体；通过持续可靠地检测375克碎牛肉中的1个菌落形成单位(CFU)来证明技术可行性；以及探索性价比贸易空间。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。