Trio join forces to develop hand held device for detecting superbugs

Collaboration

Nottingham Trent University is joining with Universal Sensors Ltd and the Cambridge Design Partnership to develop a hand-held system to detect the hospital superbugs, C.difficile and MRSA. The collaboration is funded through the UK government’s new Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI), in a contract awarded by the National Institute for Health Research under its Invention for Innovation Programme.

Systematic cleaning is vital to control hospital-acquired infections.  But it is not easy to ensure that an area decontaminated by cleaning is really free from live bacteria or C.difficile spores, as there are no quick and simple environmental tests available.

The three partners are working to create an environmental testing device to make contamination testing fast and simple to perform.  The result will be a new a highly sensitive biosensor-based product that can detect pathogens in 5 minutes. Traditional tests have to be performed in a specialised laboratory and can take 2-3 days to get the results back to an infection control team.  

The collaboration has been brought together by Cambridge Design Partnership, which earlier worked with Universal Sensors in the development of the manufacturing technique for its sensors, which will form the basis of the device.

“The development of a mobile test platform is an important cornerstone of this collaboration,” said Duncan Purvis, Chief Scientific Officer of Universal Sensors. “But we also needed scientists who could develop the tests.” Alan McNally of Nottingham Trent University, a specialist in developing assays for infection control will join the collaboration.

SBRI projects involve two phases. In the first, lasting around six months the idea is taken to proof of concept. Following that, further funding is provided to get the product through to market.