Lab-on-a-Chip Electrochemical Biosensors for Foodborne Pathogen Detection: A Review of Common Standards and Recent Progress

Abstract

Foodborne pathogens are an important diagnostic target for the food, beverage, and health care industries due to their prevalence and the adverse effects they can cause to public health, food safety, and the economy. The standards that determine whether a given type of food is fit for consumption are set by governments and must be taken into account when designing a new diagnostic tool such as a biosensor platform. In order to meet these stringent detection limits, cost, and reliability standards, recent research has been focused on developing lab-on-a-chip-based approaches for detection devices that use microfluidic channels and platforms. The microfluidics-based devices are designed, developed, and used in different ways to achieve the established common standards for food pathogen testing that enable high throughput, rapid detection, low sample volume, and minimal pretreatment procedures. Combining microfluidic approaches with electrochemical biosensing could offer affordable, portable, and easy to use devices for food pathogen diagnostics. This review presents an analysis of the established common standards and the recent progress made in electrochemical sensors toward the development of future lab-on-a-chip devices that will aid 'collection-to-detection' using a single method and platform.

Keywords: biosensors; electrochemical sensors; food safety; foodborne pathogens; lab-on-a-chip; microfluidics; standards.

Figure 1

Hospitalization and death rates from confirmed infections with common foodborne pathogens [47,48,49,50].

Figure 2

Microfluidic channel material choice according to the main characteristics.

Figure 3

A schematic of the different microfluidic approaches for sample preparation.