Food safety has recently become major public health issues. Multiplexed foodborne pathogen detection is essential to distinguish among multiple pathogens, thereby facilitating food safety assessment and improving healthcare. In the developing countries where foodborne illnesses are prevalent, unreliable electric power, lack of laboratory equipment and inadequate well-trained laboratory staff are all common shortfalls. With advances in microfluidic technologies, various integrated microfluidic devices have been demonstrated for multiplex target detection, which however, require off-chip reagent storage, complex operation steps and equipment-dependent nucleic acid amplification, restricting their applications in resource-limited settings. To address these challenges, we demonstrate the development of a simple and equipment-free all-in-one paper-polymer hybrid microfluidic device for multiplexed detection of foodborne pathogens. All functional paper substrates were enclosed in a three dimensional-printed polymer housing, creating a hybrid device that enables on-chip dried reagent storage, sample preparation, and simultaneous isothermal amplification and colorimetric detection without requiring any complex and expensive equipment. With minimal operation steps, the proposed device is suitable for use by untrained users especially in resource-poor settings. The device can simultaneously amplify and detect Salmonella Enteritidis, Escherichia coli O157:H7 and Campylobacter jejuni, with the detection limit of as low as 10, 10 and 100 CFU/mL, respectively in both water and milk samples in about an hour. The proposed paper-polymer hybrid device offers tremendous potential for simultaneous amplification and detection of multiple types of targets for diverse applications in the future.

Development of paper-polymer hybrid chip for multiplexed detection of foodborne pathogens

255th National Meeting (2018)

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