Project description
Fast detection of small amounts of bacteria in water will have widespread applications
Not all bacteria are created equal. Although most are beneficial, the ones that are not can do a lot of damage. Detecting these pathogens wherever they live, be it in hospitals, on plants or in the grocery store – and doing it quickly and reliably even when present in small amounts – is critical to human health and economic well-being. Current methods face significant limitations. The EU-funded MARILIA project is implementing novel technologies and tools for identifying and characterising pathogens in a new detection assay to identify human pathogens in water. Bacterial waterborne diseases include cholera, typhoid fever and dysentery, which present serious complications. Assessment of the assay's commercial potential could lead to the creation of a start-up to take the product to market and enhance the health and safety of people around the world.
Objective
The fast and cost-efficient detection of pathogens is highly important in many sectors such as healthcare, agriculture, and food industry. However, current technologies are limited, and significant advances are required to develop low-cost (<10€) detection assays that can detect a few bacterial cells (<10 cells/ml) within less than one hour. In the FET-Open project MARA, which is the basis for MARILIA, we have developed novel technologies and tools that have a high exploitation potential. Thus, we have initiated the follow-up project MARILIA, which aims to exploit these results and realise a new detection concept for the fast, low-cost identification of human pathogens in water samples. In MARILIA, we will increase the technology readiness level (TRL) of our novel detection concept from TRL 2 to TRL 5. A well-balanced consortium has been established, comprising an applied research institute as coordinator (AIT, coordinated also the MARA project), a university (UZ), a basic research institute (RBI), an SME (D1, acting as business incubator) and a large company (IREN, representing a potential future customer). If the MARILIA detection assay meets the requirements defined by IREN, a start-up will be founded to commercially exploit the innovations in the post-project phase.
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Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
1210 Wien
Austria