This handheld device can detect microbes in minutes using smart nanomaterials

Traditionally microbe detection requires a sample to be sent to a lab, often taking days for results.  In this exclusive interview for BWB TV RAN Biotechnologies Founder and CEO Dr. Roger A. Nassar discusses a new handheld technology for rapid microbe capture and detection that cuts this time down to as little as a few minutes. Speaking to Cheryl Scott, Senior Technical Editor at BioProcess International, he explains how smart nanomaterials capture microbes through a device that attaches to a smartphone before image recognition is used to detect the microbes present. Watch the full interview or read the highlights below.

What are the main technologies that you're working with?

'We work at the chemistry biology interface. Particularly we make smart nanomaterials that have applications in biotechnologies. So the common dominator here is that we make smart nanomaterials that could have different applications in biology. That being said, we focus on two main market segments. The first one we focus on microfluidics, particularly droplet microfluidic markets; so we make materials for them to encapsulate biologicals for next gen sequencing, for drug discovery and so on. We also make materials for capturing and detecting microbes, so we have a new technology to rapidly capture and rapidly detect live microbes.'

How are those two technologies related to one another?

'They are related at the nano scale. They are related at the material scale. So based on our experience in various domains in the synthetic chemistry, we can functionalize materials any way – so using the same core materials but functionalize in that way or this way in order to accommodate their use in specific biotechnology applications.'

So you can detect live microbes in a much faster way than what we are doing with environmental control and that kind of thing. Could you tell me how that works?

'It’s a very different way to look at and detect live microbes compared to traditional ways…In essence we focus on detecting live microbes, live bacteria, fungi and spore formers in samples, and we try to make it a true point of use technology that is fast and easy. It could be applied at many different pain points in terms of the bioprocessing and manufacturing metrology kind of setups.

The way it works is that our smart nanomaterials, we have designed them to recognize and capture live microbes. What the user has to do is basically is mix a sample to be tested with our nanomaterials that come preloaded into small tubes and they are inserted into a device that we have developed in-house. [The device is attached to] a smart phone and it could be attached to a tablet or a laptop – basically any device that is capable of holding a small piece of image recognition software. This is where the third part of our technology come in to game.

So the first part, the essential part, is the smart nanomaterials that go after microbes and capture them to detect them. The second part is this small device, and the third part is the image recognition software.

Basically our materials microscopically go after microbes and they aggregate them, and they form at the end of the day a 3D mass. Now, the presence of this mass indicates the presence of live microbes and their size as well indicates how many cells we started with in the sample. The image recognition software helps us quantify that size of mass in the sample, [based on the rate of replication]. So our quick capture rapid microbe detection technology is a three-prong technology. It's materials, device, software, and everything can fit in the pocket.'

What do you see as the applications in the markets here and maybe elsewhere?

'They're really limitless. For the bioprocessing crowd to detect sterility in bioreactors and in connections to bioreactors, samples instead of sending them to a microbiology lab, they can be tested there and then where the sample is collected. And we have actually done many studies proving that examining the microbiology composition of a sample at the site of sampling is extremely critical, as opposed to collecting a sample and sending it somewhere else where you lose lots of biological information.

But then because it's that simple, and it could be really operated by anybody - you don't have to have scientific training. It's a very short protocol, six or seven steps, and anybody can use the device - we had high school students using it. So you can envision now stepping out of the lab and trying it at home, checking for microbial contamination in the kitchen, in the bathroom, your drinking water, even on planes, on trains, detecting microbes not just in solutions but in air indirectly and on surfaces, including fruit, vegetables, meats and so on. So really the application markets are limitless for this technology.'

It takes a few hours at least, if not days, with the traditional method of taking samples and sending them off. How long does it take with this method?

'We shrank down this time to minutes to hours. It is very much related to the live microbes - they need to be alive - and we take pride in the fact that our technology differentiates between between dead and alive.

We've been sampling it to early adopters that have been testing samples anywhere between a few hundred microliters to one milliliter, and we also have early adopters that have been testing it with half a liter. That's another major advantage to our technology; it's not limited by the size of the sample.

We take advantage of the fact that our nanomaterials are insoluble in aqueous environments so we can separate them at any time. So these could be mixed with big bulks of samples, liters even, of samples, and then at the end of the day we look at our materials and try to see if there are microbes in there or not.'

This interview was filmed at Biotech Week Boston in September 2018.