FDA announces winners for Food Safety Challenge

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced the winners of the 2014 FDA Food Safety Challenge, which was aimed at developing methods for the speedy and efficient detection of salmonella.

Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana is the grand prize winner, while Pronucleotein Inc from San Antonio, Texas was the runner-up.

Purdue University’s Michael Landisch’s team demonstrated a process that could filter pathogenic cells out of a stomached food sample using hollow fibres.

This process was able to decrease the time for sample preparation from between 24 and 48 hours, to two to three hours, capturing small numbers of foodborne pathogens in large volumes of liquid suspensions.

Pronucleotein developed a system by which aptamers replace antibodies, a process that takes around 30 minutes. The system used DNA aptamer-magnetic bead sandwich assays, used to detect foodborne pathogens with a handheld fluorescence reader.

The grand prize winner and runner-up winner will receive $300,000 and $100,000 in prize money, respectively.

The FDA’s acting chief science officer and research director in the Office of Foods and Veterinary Medicine Palmer Orlandi said: "We are truly impressed by the number and quality of submissions we received as part of the FDA 2014 Food Safety Challenge, and we are excited to announce the winners, who demonstrated the most promising ideas for fighting foodborne illness throughout the course of the challenge.

"These breakthrough concepts for detecting foodborne pathogens in fresh produce and other foods will help ensure quicker detection of problems in our food supply and help to prevent foodborne illnesses."

The FDA challenge was born out of the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010, which grants all federal agencies broad authority to conduct prize competitions to encourage innovation.

Submissions for the challenge were invited in September last year. Five finalists, which were selected and awarded $20,000 each, presented their concepts to a panel of judges on July 7.

These included Purdue University, University of Illinois, Pronucleotein, Bart Weimer, and Auburn University.

United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that one in six Americans fall sick due to foodborne illness annually, resulting in around 3,000 deaths. Salmonella has been identified as the main culprit.

The FDA hopes these innovative concepts combined with its current testing procedures and capabilities will transform food testing.