Magneto actuated biosensors for foodborne pathogens and infection diseases affecting global health

Abstract

Infectious diseases are responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths and an enormous burden of morbidity worldwide. Although most of these major infectious diseases are treatable, the accurate and rapid identification of the pathogens remains a major issue to disease control, since the incidence of infectious disease would be reduced if appropriate diagnostic tests were more widely available in the developing world as well as in low-resource settings in the developed world. Strong research efforts are thus being focused on replacing standard diagnostic and monitoring methods, by affordable and sensitive tests able to be performed at the community and primary care level. The development of new methods that are needed includes solid-phase separation techniques. In this context, the integration of magnetic particles within bioassays and biosensing devices is very promising since they greatly improve the performance of the biological reaction. The diagnosis of complex samples with magnetic particles can be easily achieved without any purification or pretreatment steps often required for standard methods, simplifying the analytical procedures. The target can be thus specifically preconcentrated from complex matrixes by magnetic actuation, increasing the specificity and the sensitivity of the assay. This chapter addresses these promising features of the magnetic particles for the detection of biomarkers in emerging technologies related with the major problems facing the global health, including pathogenic bacteria occurring in food outbreaks, in order to ensure safety in food and water supplies in low resources settings, as well as major global infection disease in low-incomes countries, such as malaria or AIDS.