Strategies for the detection of food pathogens and contaminants

We routinely use Biacore for affinity ranking and kinetic characterisation of diverse panels of hybridoma-derived and recombinant antibodies against a wide range of different clinically relevant antigens for diagnostic applications. Generally the analytes of interest are haptens or defined protein molecules and once suitably high affinity antibodies have been isolated, it is relatively straightforward to design and optimise concentration-based assays using SPR. Recently we have investigated the potential of applying Biacore technology to routine food analysis. Our experiences have shown that molecular contaminants such as microbial toxins and drug/pesticide residues translate well onto Biacore-based assay formats. However, larger and more complex entities such as spores and whole bacterial cells represent an altogether more difficult challenge. Here, we present an overview of our experiences to date with using Biacore for analysis of food contaminants and in particular the challenges associated with large analyte detection