About FDA

Description: This collaborative effort with ORA is to develop faster, more cost effective assays to identify food borne contamination and diseases.

Definition: These methods will identify pathogens in the food supply chain and will help to develop novel approaches that can be utilized at the site of food production and in testing facilities run by food producers or government agencies.

Public Health Outcome: Develop novel approaches that can be utilized by field personnel to detect food borne contamination and diseases.

Accomplishment: This project has qualified a flow cytometry platform capable of detecting individual pathogen cells in foods. Flow cytometry is a technique for counting and examining microscopic particles by suspending them in a stream of fluid and passing them by an electronic detection apparatus. Also developed are targeting reagents that allow the pathogen cells to stand out and be counted in the midst of food background that would otherwise cause a false positive signal. A new way of processing flow cytometric data has been invented that greatly increases the ability to distinguish real from false signals. Proof of concept first stage assays have been developed for detection of virulent E. coli O157, Listeria spp., Salmonella spp., Staphylococcus spp., non-typhoid Vibrio spp. The E. coli O157 has been validated to a FERN Level outside lab standard for use in nine food matrices. Two papers were prepared and submitted to a scientific journal.