Proven Pathogen Technology is Brought to a New Market

Alaska Food Diagnostics Ltd's fastrAK? rapid pathogen testing system follows hot on the heels of the first technology capitalisation from the Dstl stable: a clinical microbial detection platform recently acquired by a high profile blue chip multinational.

Spinning out of the UK government's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl) at Porton Down and sharing the same Adenylate Kinase (AK) core technology, Alaska's team of world-class scientists has exploited patented AK Phage? technology to develop a highly sensitive and specific series of rapid assays addressing food safety and product quality issues.

Having built an experienced management, development and technical team, Alaska has the extensive knowledge required to bring AK technology to the food and beverage market. Combining novel technology with established culture and immunomagnetic methods, fastrAK signifies a major step forward in the rapid detection of food pathogens, through its dramatic improvement in test accuracy and speed. In independent studies examining Salmonella spp. in food samples, it produced higher numbers of positive results within a working day, compared with three days for a confirmed negative result and five days for a confirmed positive result using conventional culture methods.

The system uses immunomagnetic separation to isolate the food pathogen of interest e.g. Salmonella coupled with bacteriophage lysis to release intracellular AK from the target cells in a highly specific manner. The AK released mediates the conversion of ADP to ATP and is measured as visible light produced by the bioluminescent reaction of the recombinant firefly enzyme luciferase, using the fastrAK? luminometer. The methodology is simple to employ in the laboratory and has a total ?hands on' time of less than 15 minutes.