Multisense Chip - continuously working air monitoring system: An integrated system for the detection of airborne biological pathogens on molecular and immunological level

摘要

Permanent monitoring of airborne bacteria is an essential tool to ensure clean and safe environment in locations such as hospital surrounding, metro stations, airports, or for big events like international sport events. Lab-on-a-chip systems are very promising approaches for a decentralized continuous pathogen monitoring. The overall system presented here consisted of a microtiter plate sized consumable and respective instrument allowing for the detection of airborne biological pathogens. The target pathogens to be detected were Yersinia pestis, Francisella tularensis, Burkholderia mallei, Burkholderia pseudomallei, Brucella melitensis, Brucella abortis, Coxiella burnetti, and Bacillus anthracis. Important to stress is that the technical platform can be easily extended to further pathogens. Apart from the implementation of the full assay process from on-chip pathogen trapping to detection, two main achievements were made: On one hand, the surface of the immunoassay can be used over a longer period of continuous monitoring of negative results despite being flushed permanently. For the case of positive results, the system will trigger an alert and the chip will be disposed. On the other hand, a PCR protocol in respect to temperature and cycle timing was developed allowing running no less than eight target PCRs with the same protocol.