Enrichment-free Salmonella Detection For Food Safety

Each year over one million people become ill due to foodborne Salmonella infections, thisaccounts for a total of 11% of all foodborne illness reported in the United States1. Salmonella isthe leading cause for foodborne illness hospitalizations (23,000 cases; 35%) and deaths (450cases; 28%). Salmonella has an enormous impact on the economy, causing $3.7 billion in costsin the United States each year; 90% of this burden ($3.3 million) is due to deaths, 8% ($294million) due to hospitalizations and 2% due to non-hospitalized cases. The primary mode ofSalmonella infection is through food, mainly raw or undercooked meat, raw eggs and unwashedvegetables. These illnesses are often tied to outbreaks that result from contaminated food thatwas not detected at a manufacturing or packaging plant. Current detection methods forSalmonella provide slow time to actionable results, making it difficult to take necessary steps incontrolling the pathogen. Sample6 has developed a new technology, based on the proprietaryBioillumination PlatformTM, which utilizes a novel synthetic engineering approach to leverage thenatural specificity of bacteriophage to detect the presence of specific bacterial species. Sample6DETECT/S system contains engineered bacteriophages, which can identify Salmonella spp. toinduce production of luminescent enzymes, upon infection of the target cells, effectivelyilluminating Salmonella. This signal can be measured with the Sample6 Luminometer andinstantiates the world's first enrichment-free pathogen diagnostic system. Sample6 has previouslyestablished feasibility that the DETECT/S assay can be adapted for finished product testing todetect Salmonella directly on food products that are prone to contamination. For this Direct-to-Phase II project, we propose to complete the development of our technology to detect Salmonellaon additional foods to achieve validation as laid out in AOAC guidelines. We will expand thetesting to include 400 Salmonella isolates belonging to clinically relevant serotypes, and completeassay development for 20 food matrices representing all commercially relevant categories,including low-moisture foods. Finally, we will develop non-replicating phage technology for ourBioIllumination Platform to further increase our reach in the market, both domestically andinternationally.