BIDMAG · Biological detection with functionalized Magnetic Sensor

Biological detection with functionalized Magnetic Sensor

The rapid, accurate and non-expensive measured detection of low concentrations of biological pathogen agents is crucial in the combat of serious public health concern. As example, the bacterium Escherichia coli (E.coli) can causes gastrointestinal, urinary, and central nervous systems diseases in the human host that, in some cases, can lead to death. According to the Drinking Water Directive of European Community, E.coli is one of the 15 parameters to be analysed on water intended for human consumption. The current methods are based on membrane filtration and subsequent culture and calculation of target organisms, what shows that the different approaches currently used in the detection of pathogenic agents are still based in culture methods that are time-consuming and labor-intensive and/or involve the use of expensive instrumentation and technical experts. In addition, they are limited to the detection of cultivable bacteria that leads, often, to false-negative results related to problems on the detection of bacteria in a viable but non-cultivable (VBNC) state. VBNC bacteria consist in living cells that, when exposed to a stressful condition such as disinfectant agents, lost their ability to grow in standard solid culture media and therefore, cannot be detected by the traditional culture methods. However, VBNC bacteria are still metabolically active and they are able to resuscitate in favourable conditions. This fact results in a potential risk in several health facilities and in food industry . The development of simple and available tools and technologies that demonstrate fast response times, user-friendliness, cost-efficiency, and suitability for mass production, able to easily and quickly detect all the viable biological agents at a very early stage, are in the demand to prevent millions of deaths. The objective of this project is to develop smart hybrid surfaces of polymer functionalised for a specific bacteria binding, onto magnetic substrates, able to present magnetic response to a given biological agent. E.coli is a model bacterium, but other pathogen species can be equally detected if the appropriate bacteriophages are used instead. The innovation of the project is based on: • the increase in sensitivity of the magnetoelastic technology that will allow its use for label and label-free clinical applications. The combination of magneto-spectroscopy with the sensitive capacity of the hybrid polymer/bacteriophages surface allows the realization of rapid, easy, cheap, sustainable and highly sensitive quantification tests. • the parallel chemical and magnetic study of the coating and further biological interaction process, which will allow to follow the interaction by a contactless method compatible with microfluidic techniques and in a very short time scale, as compared with available complex analytical procedures. • the benefits to the health system will benefit with the use of BIDMAG as new point of care method of diagnosis

Текст от CORDIS, на английски · Данни: CORDIS, © Европейски съюз