Real time high sensitive food allergen sensor

Food allergies affect around 26 million of Europeans and 32 million of Americans.

The severity of the allergic reaction may vary from less severe symptoms such as hives and digestive problems, to a quickly progressing and potentially life-threatening anaphylactic shock.

Nowadays, food allergy is an incurable condition, so the most important preventive measure is the complete abstinence from the allergen.

Existing allergen detection methods are slow, cumbersome, costly, and most of them are limited to work in a lab environment.The RESAS project’s goal is to fabricate a device able to sense extremely low concentrations of food allergens within minutes.

This is achieved by combining an ultra-high sensitive biosensor substrate, an integrated optical transducer and an electrical signal processing unit.

The proposed kind of sensor on the basis of integrated optics enables small size (5 cm3), high repeatability and instant response, as well as potentially low-cost and mass production.

This is achieved thanks to the RoF technology and the signal analysis of the output laser of the SPR in the electrical domain, which reduces instrumentation demands with instant allergen detection and great biosensing sensitivity.

Furthermore, the RESAS device has a removable biosensing substrate that can be replaced after use, allowing users to operate RESAS several times and for as many types of food allergens as needed.

This approach of interchangeable biosubstrates tackles one of the major limitations of most current biosensing technologies, which can be used only once and are restricted to one type of food allergen.The RESAS project will significantly impact the food industry, as our food allergen testing method promises to be quick, effective, and inexpensive.

This may lead politicians to demand a more rigorous testing regime, greatly improving food safety. Finally, a new class of portable test devices for millions of allergists and end-users will be created.