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SMGN Health Department
8/18/2007
Sword Diagnostics Inc recently announced the commercial launch of the Saber Detection System, a rapid and highly sensitive pathogen detection platform for several critical food safety applications.
The technology provides food manufacturers with actionable results in hours, allowing them to quickly identify and take action against pathogenic contamination, and thereby reduce “at risk” production in their facilities.
“This important breakthrough in time-to-actionable results will help food processing companies be more proactive in finding and addressing contamination problems,” says Dave Dingott, President of Sword Diagnostics. “Test results from the Saber Detection System enable them to quickly and effectively regain process control.”
Sword’s initial food safety assay is for Environmental Listeria. This Environmental Listeria assay provides results in 16 hours at 1-5 CFU per sample. This means processors can have results by their next sanitation shift and can take immediate and focused action against potential environmental problems.
“Current test methods for environmental Listeria take 2 to 3 days,” Dingott said. “As a result, the food product produced during 10 to 12 production shifts can be at risk of contamination. The speed of the Saber Detection System allows processors to reduce this ‘at risk’ production by as much as 60%.” “Saber results minimally provide a 1.5 day advantage in identifying and addressing emerging microbial control issues, compared with most current rapid detection methods”, Dingott added.
The Saber Detection System incorporates Sword’s Biomolecular Resonance (BMR) technology in an automated, easy-to-use platform. BMR combines immunomagnetic separation and capture with the company’s proprietary chemistry for Raman spectroscopic detection. “This represents a 100 to 10,000-fold improvement in sensitivity over existing detection methods.” Dingott said.
The Environmental Listeria assay is currently undergoing validation testing at several major food laboratories. In addition, Sword Diagnostics is in the process of gaining AOAC/RI approval for this assay. Study data documenting the Saber Detection System’s superior speed and accuracy will be published shortly.
The company also plans to introduce an assay for Salmonella this year. “We anticipate this new Salmonella test will have comparable sensitivity and specificity to existing test methods and provide results much more quickly,” Dingott said. “Time-to-results are expected to be reduced by 50% or more with this assay,” Dingott said.
Launched at the 2006 IAFP Annual Meeting, the Saber Detection System was recognized as a significant technological development. Sword organized numerous client-specific sessions at the meeting, where representatives from major food processing companies expressed a high level of interest in the Saber Detection System.
Formed in 2004, Sword Diagnostics is headquartered at the National Center for Food Safety & Technology, near Chicago, Illinois. It is initially targeting food safety applications but will develop assay platforms for other applications in clinical diagnostics and drug discovery.
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| Sword Diagnostics 6502 South Archer Road Summit-Argo, IL 60501 708-563-9166 x301 info@sworddiagnostics.com www.sworddiagnostics.com |