A microfluidic platform for foodborne pathogenic bacteria detections

用于食源性致病菌检测的微流控平台

• 批准号: RGPIN-2018-06370
• 负责人: Cao, Xudong
• 金额: $ 2.4万
• 依托单位: University of Ottawa
• 依托单位国家: 加拿大
• 项目类别: Discovery Grants Program - Individual
• 财政年份: 2020
• 资助国家: 加拿大
• 起止时间: 2020-01-01 至 2021-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nserc-crsng.gc.ca/ase-oro/Details-Detailles_eng.asp?id=712984
• 关键词: microfluidic; platform; foodborne; pathogenic; bacteria

Outbreaks of foodborne diseases in recent years have led to the growth in demand for rapid, sensitive, and high-throughput methods and instrumentation for foodborne pathogens from food safety inspection authorities and food industries. A low-cost, robust, reliable and high-throughput pathogen detection platform can meet this increasing demand and allow food safety authorities to quickly respond to events such as foodborne disease outbreaks and bioterrorist attacks on our food supply chains. To this end, this research program is to develop a sensitive and low cost microfludics-based detection system that can circumvent the need for culture enrichment process and complete the whole testing of real-world foods within a short period of time. The proposed program integrates sample preparation and sample detection on-chip functionalities. It includes a separator to remove large food particles from the homogenized real-world food sample, a concentrator to remove liquid from the sample, and a detector for efficient capture and detection of target bacteria. As such, an input sample can be processed and subsequently analyzed in this continuous flow fashion within the system. For the current Discovery Grant (DG) application, the main objective is to develop an ultra sensitive microfluidic device that offers both sensitive and rapid detections. To achieve this, we propose to surface modify the microfluidic channel walls with dendrimers and conjugate target bacteria-specific aptamers. This will not only reduce the background signals due to non-specific bindings to the microchannel walls, but also provide multiple reaction sites to subsequently attach bacteria capturing aptamers. Studies will be advanced to investigate aptamers with different types of linkers at different linkage length to the anchoring surfaces. To further enhance detection, rolling circle amplification (RCA) signal intensifications will also be used, effectively enhancing detection signals. Finally, microfluidics flow patterns will be studied to improve detection efficiency. Anticipated significance of the work: The proposed detection system is novel in that it offers not only rapid and sensitive detections, but also possibilities to integrate with other microfluidic on-chip functionalities, such as separator and concentrators. The proposed studies is a key component of the overall proposed detection system. If successfully implemented, the fully integrated detection platform will significantly reduce detection time and lower detection cost, thereby allowing safety authorities to extend their testing coverage and frequencies and playing more proactive roles in identifying possible contaminations and suspicious activities.

近年来食源性疾病的爆发导致食品安全检查当局和食品工业对食源性病原体快速、敏感和高通量方法和仪器的需求增长。一个低成本、强大、可靠和高通量的病原体检测平台可以满足这一日益增长的需求，并使食品安全当局能够快速应对食源性疾病暴发和食品供应链上的生物恐怖袭击等事件。为此，本研究计划是开发一种敏感且低成本的基于微流体的检测系统，该系统可以避免对培养富集过程的需要，并在短时间内完成对真实食品的整个测试。