PFI-TT: Mobile device-based detection of toxins in food crops to monitor food safety and improve public health

这一创新-技术转化伙伴关系（PFI-TT）项目的更广泛影响/商业潜力使多个利益攸关方能够在食品系统价值链的大多数阶段进行食品安全测试，包括个人层面的农民和消费者，采购、储存和分销点的食品工业，以及援助机构监测食品援助包的安全性。最初的重点将是检测两种真菌毒素，黄曲霉毒素和伏马菌素，这两种毒素都是已知的致癌食品污染物，存在于包括玉米在内的几种粮食作物中。许多国家规定了霉菌毒素的最高浓度水平;然而，由于缺乏在需要时评估其浓度的工具，这些规定在大多数情况下无法执行。目前的工作将开发一种快速，低成本，点的需要，确定食品安全所需的灵敏度和特异性，国内和国际食品安全机构的建议。此外，该团队将与商业伙伴合作，优化技术转让和商业化，使其能够进入市场。预计这项技术有可能大大减少市场上的不安全食品，并改善全球公众健康。 拟议项目的重点是开发一种技术，通过检测粮食作物中的黄曲霉毒素（AF）和伏马菌素（FM）来进行食品安全的需求点评估。这些霉菌毒素可以污染几种粮食作物，包括玉米，大米和花生。 食用受污染的食物可能导致癌症和其他不良健康后果。目前将食品样品送到集中实验室进行食品安全检测的方法需要昂贵的设备，耗时，需要熟练的技术人员，并且不具有成本效益。所提出的技术包括一个移动终端，一个定制的测试条，接受食品样品提取物，并在智能手机应用程序的帮助下进行分析。智能手机应用程序操作其成像系统，解释试纸结果，并在几分钟内显示结果。分析结果可以传输到远程服务器，用于监控食品安全结果。该项目的主要目标包括开发AF和FM的侧流分析，优化从粮食作物中提取AF和/或FM的技术，更新现有的智能手机应用程序以定制AF和/或FM检测，以及在实验室中进行小规模验证，以确定开发的样品的性能参数-该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得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的支持。

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Partnerships for Innovation - Technology Translation (PFI-TT) project is enabling food safety testing at most stages in the food-systems value chain by multiple stakeholders, including farmers and consumers at the individual level, the food industry at the points of procurement, storage, and distribution, and by aid agencies to monitor the safety of food aid packages. The initial focus will be to detect two mycotoxins, aflatoxin and fumonisin, both of which are known cancer-causing food contaminants and are found in several food crops including corn. The maximum concentration levels for mycotoxins have been prescribed by many countries; however, these cannot be enforced in most settings because of lack of tools to assess their concentration at the point-of-need. The present work will develop a rapid, low-cost, point-of-need assay for ascertaining food safety with required sensitivity and specificity as recommended by domestic and international food safety agencies. In addition, the team will work with the business partner to optimize the technology for transfer and commercialization to enable it to reach market. It is anticipated that this technology has the potential to significantly reduce unsafe food from the marketplace and improve public health worldwide. The proposed project is focused on developing a technology for point-of-need assessment of food safety by detection of aflatoxin (AF) and fumonisin (FM) in food crops. These mycotoxins can contaminate several food crops including corn, rice, and peanuts. Consumption of contaminated food can lead to cancer and other adverse health outcomes. The current approach of sending food samples to centralized labs for food safety testing requires expensive equipment, is time-consuming, requires skilled technicians, and is not cost-effective. The proposed technology comprises of a mobile device, a custom-made test strip that accepts food sample extracts and performs the analysis with the help of a smartphone application. The smartphone app operates its imaging system, interprets the test strip results, and displays the results in a few minutes. The analysis results can be transferred to a remote server for monitoring of food safety results. The primary goals of the project include the development of lateral flow assays for AF and FM, optimization of techniques for extracting AF and/or FM from food crops, updating existing smartphone apps to customize them for AF and/or FM detection, and small-scale validation in the lab to determine the performance parameters of the developed sample-in-answer-out assays.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.