Direct airborne particulate and bioaerosol capture using suspended liquid surfactant membranes for continuous biodetection and threat analysis

使用悬浮液体表面活性剂膜直接捕获空气中的颗粒物和生物气溶胶，进行连续生物检测和威胁分析

• 批准号: EP/X017702/1
• 负责人: Daniel McCluskey
• 金额: $ 25.21万
• 依托单位: University of Hertfordshire
• 依托单位国家: 英国
• 项目类别: Research Grant
• 财政年份: 2023
• 资助国家: 英国
• 起止时间: 2023 至 无数据
• 项目状态: 未结题
• 来源: https://gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=EP%2FX017702%2F1
• 关键词: Direct; airborne; particulate; bioaerosol; capture

Infectious airborne diseases are an enormous socioeconomic burden with impacts that span plant, animal and human health. Technology capable of collecting and seamlessly detecting the presence of pathogens have yet to reach maturity rendering aerosol dispersion as a disease vector particularly challenging to mitigate. To date there is no widespread use of sentinel or monitor systems to mitigate airborne disease transmission, pushing the burden of disease prevention onto diagnostic approaches and post disease infection control measures, as witnessed during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. The ability to continuously monitor air samples and identify new and emerging risks has the potential to deliver early warning and inform decision making prior to infection, providing enhanced protection for a wide variety of use cases in environmental, civilian and military settings.The vision for this research programme is to take a leap forward in high-concentration, low-loss, aerosol capture for biodetection purposes through the development of a liquid membrane system that directly captures airborne material into a fluid that can be readily sampled for rapid downstream analysis. Resolving this has application towards airborne monitoring across a range of indoor and outdoor settings.Flexible liquid surfactant membranes are wholly untested for aerosol collection and detection. There are several engineering challenges to overcome in the setup and stabilisation of surfactant membranes in addition to the added complexity of particle capture from air moving over the membrane. The two core engineering challenges for this research are, firstly, the ability to reliably generate, sustain and subsequently manage the collapse of a liquid film membrane (LiMEM) that has a composition that is biocompatible with downstream analysis tools such as molecular diagnostic (qPCR, LAMP) or immunoassay-based detection (LFA etc). The second, and perhaps more ambitious aspect of this research is the suspension of the LiMEM within an airflow to efficiently capture and retain aerosol material.Addressing these engineering challenges would yield a tool that can combat the transmission of pathogenic aerosols, leading to increased confidence in defence settings, identification of new and emerging environmental disease risks or halting the spread of Healthcare Associated Infection (HCAI) in hospital and care settings. The proposed research plan is divided into phases to address the underlying engineering challenges. Over 24 months we will develop a proof of principle platform to validate the LiMEM concept as a potential component in a fully integrated platform for collection, analysis and identification and quantification of harmful biological aerosols. The system will be benchmarked against known biowarfare aerosol analogs (inert/aerodynamic: Polystyrene (PSL) microspheres, bacterial spore: Bacillus Atrophaeus, protein/toxin: ovalbumin) so that the resultant data can be compared reliably to other recent biodetection advances developed by the UH group for the UK MoD (e.g. ESP/Electrowetting platforms).Driven by the combined vision of aerosol detection specialists, environmental engineering experts and with input from infection control and management experts, this highly ambitious project aims to deliver a new method to providing transformative real-time low cost environmental bioaerosol monitoring technology.

传染性空中疾病是一种巨大的社会经济负担，其影响涵盖了植物，动物和人类健康。能够无缝收集和无缝检测病原体存在的技术尚未达到成熟度，使气溶胶分散剂作为疾病媒介，尤其挑战性地减轻。迄今为止，尚无广泛使用前哨或监测系统来减轻空气传播的传播，从而将预防疾病的负担推向诊断方法和疾病后感染控制措施，如SARS-COV-2大流行期间所见。连续监控空气样本并确定新的和新兴风险的能力，有可能在感染前发出预警并为决策提供信息，从而增强了对环境，平民和军事环境中各种用例的保护，该研究计划的愿景是在高度集合，低损失，气动效果上促进型号的材料，以促进生物启动的液体系统，从而促进液体的进发，从而促进型号的液体，从而促进生物效果的液体效果。很容易采样以进行快速下游分析。解决此问题已应用于在室内和室外设置范围内的空中监测。富足的液体表面活性剂膜完全未经测试以进行气溶胶收集和检测。除了从膜上移动的空气中捕获粒子捕获的增加之外，还需要克服一些工程挑战。这项研究的两个核心工程挑战首先是可靠产生，维持和随后管理液体膜膜（LIMEM）的崩溃的能力，该液体膜（LIMEM）具有与下游分析工具（例如分子诊断（QPCR，LAMP，LAMP）或基于ImmunoAseAsay的检测（LFA）（LFA等），该组合物具有生物相容性。 The second, and perhaps more ambitious aspect of this research is the suspension of the LiMEM within an airflow to efficiently capture and retain aerosol material.Addressing these engineering challenges would yield a tool that can combat the transmission of pathogenic aerosols, leading to increased confidence in defence settings, identification of new and emerging environmental disease risks or halting the spread of Healthcare Associated Infection (HCAI) in hospital and care settings.拟议的研究计划分为阶段，以应对潜在的工程挑战。在24个月的时间里，我们将开发一个原理平台的证明，以验证Limem概念为有害生物气溶胶的收集，分析和识别和量化的完全集成平台中的潜在组成部分。该系统将针对已知的BioWarfare气溶胶类似物（惰性/空气动力学：聚苯乙烯（PSL）微球，细菌孢子：脂肪芽孢杆菌，蛋白质/毒素：卵形蛋白：卵形蛋白），因此可以将所得数据与其他BiodeTection Advances相比，E.GET（E.在气溶胶检测专家，环境工程专家的联合愿景以及感染控制和管理专家的意见下，这个高度雄心勃勃的项目旨在为提供新的方法提供一种新方法来提供变革性的实时低成本环境生物素监测技术。