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Announcements - Sensing pathogenic problems on a chip
September 13, 2010 — Ottawa, Ontario
A decade ago, in May 2000, Canada experienced its worst-ever E. coli outbreak after this bacteria entered the water supply in Walkerton, Ontario, killing seven people and making more than 2,300 others sick. More recently, 22 Canadians died and another 57 became seriously ill after consuming luncheon meat contaminated with the bacterium, Listeria monocytogenes. This resulted in a massive recall by Maple Leaf Foods Inc. of its packaged meat products. Detecting deadly pathogens like E. coli and Listeria quickly and accurately could prevent future public health crises, which is the idea behind new sensing technologies being developed at NRC.
As part of the NRC Genomics and Health Initiative, a multidisciplinary scientific team involving several NRC facilities has undertaken a three-year, $17-million project to design biochips to investigate the molecular processes underlying critical infectious diseases. The goal is to create small and efficient point-of-care diagnostic devices integrated onto a single silicon chip. These biochips, in turn, could rapidly detect specific pathogenic markers based on their "genomic signature" in order to diagnose infectious agents that threaten water and food safety, or are responsible for hospital-acquired infections.
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