PFI-TT: Development of a Prototype for Rapid Diagnosis of Food-Borne Pathogen

创新伙伴关系-技术转化（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力包括开发一种用于鉴定食源性细菌病原体的新的单试验筛选方法。据目前估计，仅在美国，食源性病原体每年就导致4800万人患病，数千人住院，数百人死亡。快速识别食品中病原体污染的来源和严重程度对于避免疫情爆发以及确保食品安全至关重要。与需要数小时或数天才能得到结果的现有多步骤筛选测试相比，拟议中的快速诊断技术具有竞争优势，因为它将在一小时内提供测试结果。一旦成功开发和实施，这项技术将成为食品安全诊断的重要工具，能够在食品供应链的早期识别受污染的食品，从而帮助避免重大食源性疾病爆发和代价高昂的食品召回。拟议的项目将集中于解决食品工业中的一个重要问题。食品安全诊断实验室用于病原体筛查的大多数现有方法速度慢，需要昂贵的仪器，需要熟练的技术人员，并且往往不是快速筛查目的的最佳选择。拟议的项目将侧重于开发一种新的快速筛选选定食物基质中的细菌病原体的方法，该方法将样品预处理和检测步骤结合在一个单一的测试和平台中。实验任务包括设计和开发原型平台设备，以及使用实际相关样本进行鲁棒性测试和优化诊断方法。在成功开发和验证后，该技术可被采用和改进，用于保健和环境监测领域的其他快速诊断应用。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 Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project includes the development of a new one-test screening method for identification of food borne bacterial pathogens. It is currently estimated that food borne pathogens cause 48 million illnesses, thousands of hospitalizations, and hundreds of deaths every year in the U.S. alone. Quick identification of the source and severity of the pathogen contamination in food is critical to avoid outbreaks as well as to ensure food safety. The proposed rapid diagnostic technology has a competitive edge over existing methods as it will provide test results under an hour, as opposed to existing multistep screening tests that can take several hours or days to get a result. Upon successful development and implementation, this technology will serve as an important tool for food safety diagnostics, that will enable identification of contaminated food early in the food supply chain and thereby helping avoid major food-borne illness outbreaks and expensive food recalls. The proposed project will focus on addressing an important problem in the food industry. Most existing methods used by food safety diagnostic labs for pathogen screening are slow, require expensive instrumentation, demand skilled technicians and are often not the best choice for rapid screening purposes. The proposed project will focus on the development of a new rapid screening of bacterial pathogens in select food matrices that combine both sample preconditioning and detection steps in a single test and platform. The experimental tasks include design and development of a prototype platform device and robust testing and optimization of the diagnostic method using practically relevant samples. Upon successful development and validation, the technology could be adopted and modified for other rapid diagnostic applications in the fields of health care and environmental monitoring.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.