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

这项小企业创新研究（SBIR）第一阶段项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力是能够在4小时内可靠地检测出肉类中的食源性病原体。节省的时间将大大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。提出的技术将解决食品样品中快速细菌检测的主要瓶颈，这不是检测本身，而是被称为细菌富集的样品制备步骤。在这一步中，样品被孵育20小时或更长时间，以使细菌繁殖并达到可检测的水平。细菌富集被称为“食品安全和微生物学领域的百年难题”，目前没有其他替代方法。拟议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，将碎牛肉提前一天送到零售商的货架上，估计可以减少50%的食物浪费。因为牛肉的生产是能源密集型的，这种减少浪费的做法每年将节省数万亿加仑的水，并防止数十亿磅的甲烷和温室气体的排放。该SBIR一期项目旨在探索一种独特的基于微过滤的富集技术，以分离和浓缩碎牛肉中的病原体。这将能够在4小时内检测到单个致病菌，其检测限符合监管指南。该技术结合了洗涤、微过滤和沉淀，并添加了化学试剂，从样品中分离和浓缩细菌。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对细菌浓度有害的蛋白质聚集体；通过持续可靠地检测375克碎牛肉中的1菌落形成单位（CFU）来证明技术可行性；探索性能成本交易空间。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

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.