Vassilios Constantoudis: National Centre for Scientific Research "Demokritos", Patriarchou Gregoriou E' & 27 Neapoleos Str., Ag. Paraskevi, 153 41 Athens, Greece.
has been pinpointed by the World Health Organization as the highest health burden of all waterborne pathogens in the European Union and is responsible for many disease outbreaks around the globe. Today, standard analysis methods (based on bacteria culturing onto agar plates) need several days (~12) in specialized analytical laboratories to yield results, not allowing for timely actions to prevent outbreaks. Over the last decades, great efforts have been made to develop more efficient waterborne pathogen diagnostics and faster analysis methods, requiring further advancement of microfluidics and sensors for simple, rapid, accurate, inexpensive, real-time, and on-site methods. Herein, a lab-on-a-chip device integrating sample preparation by accommodating bacteria capture, lysis, and DNA isothermal amplification with fast (less than 3 h) and highly sensitive, colorimetric end-point detection of in water samples is presented, for use at the point of need. The method is based on the selective capture of viable bacteria on on-chip-immobilized and -lyophilized antibodies, lysis, the loop-mediated amplification (LAMP) of DNA, and end-point detection by a color change, observable by the naked eye and semiquantified by computational image analysis. Competitive advantages are demonstrated, such as low reagent consumption, portability and disposability, color change, storage at RT, and compliance with current legislation.
Lab Chip. 2010 Feb 21;10(4):462-9
[PMID: 20126686]
Biotechnol J. 2013 Nov;8(11):1267-79
[PMID: 24019250]
Grants
T2EDK-03877/European Regional Development Fund of the European Union and Greek national funds through the Operational Program Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation, under the call RE-SEARCH-CREATE-INNOVATE
