Developing next-generation portable rapid tests for food authenticity

在过去的几年里，感染的诊断测试发生了显著的变化，随着侧流设备被热情地应用到我们的家庭中，家庭冠状病毒测试被广泛采用。这表明，一系列诊断应用的生物分析--如免疫分析--不再需要在实验室进行。然而，还有许多其他领域对公众健康、安全和工业生产率至关重要，在这些领域，样品仍然使用传统的冗长的实验室方法进行处理。例如，在整个复杂的供应链中，确定食品中病原体、化学品、毒素、过敏原和/或掺假物的污染已成为一个反复出现的问题。尽管自2013年马肉丑闻以来，公众的兴趣有所下降，但随着媒体和社交媒体对食品真实性的日益关注，食品真实性不仅会损害声誉，并在召回事件中造成严重的经济影响，而且还会通过传染病和食品过敏原的传播对人类健康构成重大风险，还会引起某些信仰和信仰的人对道德和伦理的担忧。例如，其他配料或食品与以动物为基础的配料交叉污染，以及为了经济利益故意改变或错误标记食品的成分。开发在整个供应链中实施的强大的认证和可追溯性系统将有助于改善食品安全和预防食品欺诈。因此，越来越需要开发能够在现场或现场同时检测多种污染物的快速创新诊断工具。这对于动物性食品和素食食品尤其重要，这些食品通常是经过深度加工的，包含许多不同的成分和添加剂。掺假肉类被描述为“出于健康、宗教和经济原因而令人反感的用廉价品种的肉类替代或混合的欺诈性做法”。出于这些原因，进行了肉类形态测试，即动物物种的鉴定。到目前为止，还没有一种快速的方法可以在商业上适用于所有动物或纯素食产品的形态检测；一系列的方法，包括酶联免疫吸附试验、聚合酶链式反应和横向流动作为检测的工具箱。这类食品污染可以通过检测特定物种中发现的特定靶标的免疫分析来检测。正如在COVID期间观察到的那样，免疫分析的一个主要优势(相对于实验室的聚合酶链式反应或质谱仪)是操作员或分析员的便携性和简单性。横向流动免疫分析(LFA)设备是大规模生产的，可降低成本，并且易于在实验室外操作，可立即得出结果。侧向流动的一个众所周知的局限性是分析灵敏度：目前的实验室测试可以检测到比标准LFA低100-1000个污染物水平。该项目将应用生物信息学和免疫分析技术(如智能手机检测和微流体)在生物识别元素发现方面的最新发现，开发新一代廉价、便携、多目标的食品安全检测。这项研究项目将把微型免疫分析领域的最新发展和发现应用到食品真实性问题上。学生将平衡生物分析技术的两个同样重要的驱动因素：卓越的分析性能，但它们必须保持成本效益和可制造性。本建议的目的是开发一种简单有效的诊断测试，用于不同动物物种的同时多重分析，可用于现场分析。学生将使用几种最新的发展来探索适应当前横向流动免疫分析的可行性，例如：改进的流体结构；SMAR

The past few years have seen remarkable changes in diagnostic testing for infections, with home covid testing as lateral flow devices adopted enthusiastically into our homes. This shows how biological assays - such as immunoassays - for a range of diagnostic applications no longer need to be conducted in laboratories. Yet there are many other areas that are critical to public health and safety and industrial productivity where samples still get processed using traditional long winded laboratory methods. For example, the determination of the contamination of foodstuffs with pathogens, chemicals, toxins, allergens and/or adulterants throughout complicated supply chains has become a recurring issue. Although public interest has fallen since the horse meat scandal in 2013, food authenticity is increasingly a major concern for the food industry with enhanced media and social media attention not only damaging reputation and causing severe economic impacts in recalls, it can also pose significant risks to human health through the spread of infectious diseases and food allergens but also raise moral and ethical concerns for persons of certain faiths and beliefs. Examples include cross-contamination of other ingredients or food products with animal-based ingredients and deliberately altering or mislabelling the composition of a food for financial profit. The development of robust authentication and traceability systems implemented across the supply chain will help improve food safety and food fraud prevention. As such there is an increasing need to develop rapid innovative diagnostic tools that can detect multiple contaminants simultaneously in situ or at point of site testing. This is particularly important for animal-based and vegan foods which are often highly processed and include many different ingredients and additives. Adulteration of meat is described as "the fraudulent practice which involves substitution or mixing of flesh of cheaper variety which is objectionable for the reason of health, religion and economics". Meat speciation testing, the identification of animal species, is performed for these reasons. To date there is no rapid one method fits all approach commercially available for speciation testing of animal-based or vegan products; a range of approaches including ELISA, PCR and lateral flows are applied as a toolbox of tests.Such food contamination can be detected using immunoassays that detect particular targets found in specific species. As observed during COVID a major advantage of immunoassays (over laboratory PCR or mass spectrometry) is portability and simplicity of use for the operator or analyst. Lateral flow immunoassay (LFA) devices are mass-manufactured keeping costs down, and easy to operate outside a lab, giving immediate results. One well-known limitation of lateral flow is analytical sensitivity: current lab tests can detect 100-1000 lower levels of a contaminant than standard LFA.This project will apply the latest discoveries in biorecogniton element discovery using bioinformatics and immunoassay technology, such as smartphone detection and microfluidics, to develop a new generation of inexpensive, portable, multi-target, food security tests. This research project will apply recent developments and discoveries in the field of miniaturised immunoassay, to the problem of food authenticity. The student will balance two equally critical drivers of bioassay technology: exceptional analytical performance, yet they must remain cost-effective and manufacturable.The aim of this proposal is to develop a simple effective diagnostic test for the simultaneous multiplex analysis of different animal species for example cow, sheep, porcine, turkey, chicken, equine, donkey and goat that can be used for field-based analysis.The student will explore the feasibility of adapting current lateral flow immunoassays using several recent developments including, for example: improved fluidic configurations; smar