Bastian Breiner

Food allergies are a severe burden for affected individuals and healthcare systems. To tackle the need for simple food allergen detection, we developed a system for the detection of the soy protein glycinin via a centrifugal microfluidics-assisted lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA). Glycinin is a complex allergen requiring extensive sample preparation. The presented workflow includes a manual denaturing extraction, followed by automated centrifugal microfluidic desalting, metering and detection via LFIA. The functionality of the microfluidic cassettes was tested on prototypes produced via microthermoforming before an injection molding tool was designed, which added a cylindrical lens to improve the readout. Overall, this system aims to aid in food allergen detection with high sensitivity and minimized manual steps.

The development of new multianalyte biosensors that can detect multiple classes of biomolecules is highly desirable and will greatly improve medical diagnostics. In the field of infectious diseases, for example, it is beneficial to detect pathogens via nucleic acid analysis together with host immune response markers. In this work, we present a multianalyte-compatible lysis using antimicrobial peptides (AMPs). This strategy enables the simultaneous detection of bacterial DNA and inflammatory biomarkers via multianalyte lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA).