Biacore, the global leader in Surface Plasmon Resonance technology based systems yesterday unveiled its latest development in biosensor technology for food safety tracking.
Coordinator of the FoodSENSE project, Dr Karl-ErikHellenäs of the Swedish National Food Administration, presented results showing how Biacore's optical biosensor technology can improve consumer food safety at the European Research 2002 programme, held in Belgium yesterday.
The FoodSENSE project has demonstrated the applicability of Biacore's SPR(Surface Plasmon Resonance) biosensor based technology for the highthroughput analysis of potentially harmful contaminants and chemicalresidues in food. Involving eight other organisations from four countries,the project was supported by the EC Programme For Agriculture And Fisheries (FAIR) as part of the 4th Framework Programme.
Some veterinary medicines used to treat animals can produce residual contaminants in meat and milk products and may result in acute food poisoning, allergic reactions or the development of antibiotic resistant organisms. Few techniques have the necessary throughput, reliability, reproducibility, or sensitivity to satisfy the challenging requirements of the food industry. However, final results from FoodSENSE have shown that asubstantially higher daily throughput of tests (up to 650 samples/day) can be performed using SPR technology, with the capacity to rapidly detect amuch wider range of residues compared to existing test methods.
Such increased performance can help regulatory authorities and foodproduction laboratories increase food-monitoring capabilities in a varietyof environments such as abattoirs and dairies, claims Biacore. For example, a meat factoryhas been able to increase testing for certain antibiotic residues from lessthan 0.1 per cent of all carcasses daily to over 20 per cent using SPR technology on-site.
"The FoodSENSE project has made a great step forward in the rapid detectionof food contaminants to improve consumer safety," said Karl-Erik Hellenäs.
"During the project we have validated the technology in a number of verychallenging food production sites and EC National Reference laboratories. Wehave shown that Biacore's SPR technology really improves the reliabledetection of veterinary residues and the capability of food productionlaboratories to assure the safety, quality and composition of food."
"Combined with ready to use assay kits, our biosensor technology isextremely versatile and user friendly for routine food analyses in anon-laboratory environment," said Esa Stenberg, Head of Biacore's FoodBusiness Unit. "Our high throughput system has been shown to achieve automated, multi-analyses on a range of important drug residues in bothlaboratory and industrial environments".
The company also claims that the SPR technology has been successfully used to detect and measure illegal growth promoters in the urine of cattle, and antibiotics in the bile andtissue of pigs. It is, in addition now under evaluation by a major Europeanpoultry producer to detect Salmonella infection in poultry, a problem thatmay contribute to as much as 20 per cent of human infections.
As a result of the FoodSENSE project a new company, XenoSense Limited, hasbeen formed, with the focus on implementing the scientific and technologicaladvances made during the project. In partnership with Biacore, the companyhas developed assay kits and reagents for the detection of food contaminantsusing SPR technology. To date six kits are now available for the analysis of sulfadiazine and sulfamethazine (sulfonamides), clenbuterol,streptomycin, ractopamine and chloramphenicol.
As a result of the widespread EC consultation on future food quality andsafety research, a project entitled BioCop has been shortlisted for possibleFP6 funding. The author of this work, another FoodSENSE partner, Dr ChrisElliott from Queen's University, Belfast, explained, "I strongly believe theuse of optical biosensors will form an integral part of many types of foodassurance analysis in the coming years."
