FOOD SAFETY & INDUSTRIAL MICROBIOLOGY

Pathogen testing is currently conducted at more than 10,000 locations globally to ensure the safety of food, beverages, and pharmaceutical products. Fast, accurate strain typing of pathogens can improve consumer protection, speed source tracking and reduce industry costs.

New regulations, product recalls and consumer concern are increasing the need for pathogen strain typing in industrial microbiology testing by:

  • Pharmaceutical manufacturers
  • Food and beverage companies
  • Contract testing labs
  • Government agencies

Pharmaceutical, food and beverage companies, and contract testing labs perform rigorous testing of raw materials, in-process goods, the factory and finished products to ensure product quality, reduce spoilage and product waste, and ensure a clean/sterile production environment.

Government agencies and public health labs that track pathogen outbreaks in the food supply need strain-level ID to identify the route of contamination and pinpoint the original source.

Genome Sequence Scanning™ (GSS™) delivers fast and accurate strain typing to speed root cause analysis and effective decision-making.

Proprietary GSS technology improves time-to-results, accuracy and ease-of-use over other available genotypic and phenotypic identification systems.

Fast

  • First result in 5 hours, up to 48 samples in 24 hours
  • No cultured isolate required
  • Confirmation and strain typing directly from complex mixtures
  • Rapid uploading and screening of outbreak strain without primer design

Accurate

  • Strain types pathogens
  • Specificity comparable to pulsed field gel electrophoresis (PFGE)
  • Automated genotyping platform ensures consistent results
  • Database expandable to include newly identified pathogens
  • Can retroactively strain type in previously analyzed samples

Easy to Use

  • Works directly from complex samples or from a cultured isolate
  • Simple protocol requires just 15-20 minute hands-on time per batch
  • Automated platform requires minimal training and lower skill-level operator
  • New strain data is easily uploaded and shared

Despite current testing, each year more than 76 million Americans contract foodborne illnesses, resulting in 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths.

GSS can perform bacterial strain typing directly from complex samples, eliminating many hands-on steps and providing actionable information within five hours, days faster than existing approaches.