SMARTDETECT: A portable system for rapid nucleic acid based detection of pathogens

The objectives of the SMARTDETECT project are focused on development of a new portable LOC platform suitable for “Point of Testing” of food borne pathogens in the food processing industry, initially in a large commercial pork producing company. The LOC will be able to detect multiple pathogens at one time by integrating two newly developed molecular detection methodologies, i.e. Solid Phase PCR (SP-PCR) and Supercritical Angle Fluorescence (SAF). Furthermore – in order to simplify the LOC design, reduce the cost of LOC fabrication and make it suitable for industrial mass production scale - a new PCR approach (“Direct PCR”) without the need for nucleic acid (DNA/RNA) isolation and purification in the sample preparation step will be developed and integrated within the SMARTDETECT system.