Biophotonic sensor aims to identify pathogen in under an hour

Legionnaire’s Disease is a respiratory infection that can cause pneumonia, and in severe cases organ failure or septic shock. More than 100 cases are reported each week in America and in Europe, with a fatality rate of around 10 per cent.

Legionella bacterium is harmless in small quantities, but problems start when it multiplies in plumbing systems or air conditioning units where it can be transmitted to humans when it condenses into droplets of fine mist which are inhaled and settle in the lungs.

Now, the European group POSEIDON (Plasmonic-based automated lab-on-chip sensor for the rapid in-situ detection of Legionella) intends to change this with a sensor to spot the bacteria in less than one hour, a process that normally takes 10 days of cultivation and analysis.

Equipped with sensors, the device uses Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR), a procedure that reads information from a refracted laser beam, allowing fast, highly sensitive, inexpensive detection from a small sample without the need for labelling, which is the process of binding to a protein in order to be detected.