The development of new methodologies advancing the state of the art in foodborne pathogen detection is a challenge for scientists and technologists as well as for food industry and consumers. This project meets the challenge by providing a reliable and versatile solution thanks to the convergence of micro-nano-bio systems. The work capitalizes on several innovative concepts which have already been proven to meet the required criteria for fast, low cost and highly sensitive analysis of pathogens in food samples in a previous research project entitled LoveFood. These concepts are gathered on a credit-card size Lab-on-Chip platform, where all necessary steps for bacteria detection are performed on several chips. Specifically, bacteria capture and lysis (one chip), DNA extraction (second chip) and amplification (third chip) and finally pathogenic-DNA detection (fourth chip) can be performed in less than 8 hours and without the need for skilled personnel or large, lab-based dedicated equipment.

To proceed to a higher Technology Readiness Level towards the successful commercialization of the current prototype and produce a portable and rapid platform (targeting total pathogen analysis time of 4 hours including a 3 hour pre-enrichment step), we further develop it by integrating the bacteria lysis, DNA purification and amplification modules, as well as the biochip detection platform on a single compact cartridge, able to perform multi-pathogen analysis (i.e. Salmonella, Listeria, Escherichia coli and Bacillus cereus) in multiple samples. The system is developed for dairy products analysis, and provided a pre-industrial prototype at the end of the project.