HEATSENS_S is a high-sensitivity device that will detect Salmonella in chicken meat in less than one working day (specifically <5 hours). This has made it so that all the potential business customers that we contacted could learn first-hand about the market we are targeting, and they have shown great interest.
Salmonellosis is the second most frequent cause of gastrointestinal infections in the world, causing 93.8 million infections in humans and 155 thousand deaths every year. The cause of the disease is salmonella, a zoonotic bacterium, that is, a bacterium that is transmitted from animals to human beings, and which is found in all kinds of food, but is particularly common in the digestive system of birds (Salmonella Enteriditis infects 1 out of every 20,000 eggs), and thus has particular impact on the poultry industry.
The threshold for these controls is extremely low: meat is considered to be uncontaminated only if there is less than one colony-forming unit (CFU) in 25 mg of meat, and the total absence of bacteria must be guaranteed for the rest of samples, tools, and surfaces in contact with the animals.
If any of these tests gives a positive result for salmonella, the serotype (Enteriditis o Typhimurium) of the salmonella contaminating the sample must be determined. The serotype is the subspecies to which the bacteria belong. It is mandatory to establish the salmonella serotype found in chicken meat, mainly to have greater control over the origin of contamination.
To detect salmonella in chicken meat, the most common option nowadays, used by 80% of the market, is cell culture, the traditional detection system for all microbiological analyses. In addition, some alternative analysis techniques (such as PCR and VIDAS) are now appearing, and so far are being mainly used by large integrated firms. These two current techniques have two points in common:
1. Given that the threshold for salmonella is very low, they require an initial stage for the pre-enrichment of the sample, to allow potential salmonella strains to develop. Once the strains have grown, they can be measured (current methods are not sufficiently sensitive to smaller salmonella concentrations).
2. The analysis detects generic salmonella. If the result is positive, an additional test must be performed in the laboratory to establish the serotype of the contaminating bacteria..
On the basis of the time factor, and taking the entire process into account, the current results would take approximately 43 hours in the case of the quicker options (19 hours if the result is negative), and up to 90 hours (and 66 hours if the result is negative) in the case of slower but more widespread options. Thus there is currently no option that provides same day results.
Whereas, assessing them by the cost of analysis, the cell culture option is more attractive than the current options, whose cost for generic salmonella triples that of cell cultures. If positive, the cost of serotyping is further added.
Speeding up the analytical process means that chicken meat marketers have more days to sell a product, which increases their sales. Moreover, if a positive result is obtained on the farms (animal still alive), if the animals are not treated in time, the producer would have to run a logistical slaughter of chickens that may be contaminated, being able to market them only as frozen meat, incurring substantial losses on their investment. Or what is even worse: if the positive result arrives when the meat is already at the point-of-sale to the end customer (in the supermarket’s display case), this would mean serious harm to public health, high economic cost (product recall), and loss of reputation for the producer. This is why it is extremely important to speed up this process. So much so that when customers are asked directly as to what the ideal solution would be, they say that they will always choose the option that provides results in a shorter time, at a reasonable cost, whose margins they can assume.
To meet the identified need, Nanoimmunotech is making HEATSENS_S available to the poultry sector, which makes it possible for companies to perform Salmonella controls in their own facilities during the various stages of the production process, without the need for qualified staff, obtaining results in considerably less time and reducing costs.
The HEATSENS_S device is based on technology that combines the unique properties in gold nanoprisms to convert almost 100% of the optical energy from a laser into heat, with the high specificity of an immunoassay. Therefore, radiation with a laser beam on gold particles, used to mark the detection of antibodies, is highly effectively in producing heat. This generated heat is directly proportional to the presence of the analyte (in this case Salmonella), so that it can easily quantify the presence of Salmonella bacteria and its concentration.
In conclusion, NIT has a cutting-edge nanobiosensory technology that when transferred to a user-friendly device, successfully finds the solution that meat companies have been waiting for: high-sensitivity (that ensures the complete absence of pathogenic microorganisms, such as in the case of Salmonella), short detection time and simplicity in the process. Thus, HEATSENS_S is the solution that chicken meat producers have been searching for, who are unhappy with the current solutions available, involving long detection times and forcing them to send samples for analysis by third parties, which increases costs and limits their options for taking action.
