Projects Profile
Project Title
An Optical Biosensor to Monitor Microbial Loads in Food and Water
Partnership
Prof Peter J. Quinn, King’s College London
Prof Xiaoyuan Wang, Jiangnan University
Project Aim
This project aims to establish a strategic research partnership between King’s and Jiangnan universities to bring together the complimentary skill set of cell biochemistry at King’s and the expertise on food sciences at Jiangnan and to strengthen the bilateral collaboration in developing a novel optical biosensing system for real-time detection of microbe presence in food water, particularly, microbe presence in the food processing water during the food production. The project will also carry out preliminary assessment on the market needs, competitive advantages of the biosensor technology, and to investigate the commercialisation potential and routes of novel optical biosensor technology proposed.
Inspiration for the projects
Food safety is paramount to public health and wellbeing, therefore, is regulated by various legislations. Government regulatory agencies are responsible for implementing legislations aimed to keep our environment clean and food is safe. This relies on establishment of criteria for permissible contamination by chemicals and micro-organisms. Tests upon which contamination is judged are implicit in the legislation but methods are required to monitor the level of environmental pollution to avoid the spread of contamination and target cleanup.
Microbial is a key source causing food related poisoning, illness and infections and a causing many deaths annually, and therefore their presence in food need to be controlled. Conventional methods for detection of microbial loads in food and water including culturing techniques, nucleic acid probes and biochemical assays are specific and sensitive. Such techniques, however, are impractical for fully automated screening purposes and even less so for integration into a fully automated analysis platform intended for wider use by regulatory agencies and industry alike.
Commercial Potential and Further Development
The project will produce commercial prototype of a novel optical biosensor system capable of detecting the presence of microbes in food water in real time, continuously and automatically. The biosensor system will also be integrated into existing food processing and production facility to achieve automatic online microbe monitoring to serve as process analytical technologies for food industry.
The project aims to meet a primary industry need for technology to address microbe detection during food processing to serve as a continuous QA/QC for food manufacturers. The technology also has some wider
potential for other industry use, e.g. pharmaceutical water, and could lead to the open up of other new opportunities in other industry sectors.
