Posted: July 30th, 2010 - 7:27am
Source: PR Newswire

MARCY-L'ETOILE, France and REGENSBURG, Germany -- bioMerieux, a world leader in the field of in vitro diagnostics, and Hyglos GmbH, the leader in applied phage protein technology, today announced that a team of scientists who developed a new diagnostic tool for food microbiologists is the recipient of the 2010 Food Safety Innovation Award given by the International Association of Food Protection (IAFP). Visit www.biomerieux-usa.com or www.biomerieux-usa.com/iafp2010.
The scientists are recognized for the development of phage recombinant proteins, which offer best-in-class specificity and sensitivity for the targeted capture and detection of bacteria from a sample. Bacteriophages are highly specific viruses that only infect bacteria. For the first time in history, a phage protein has replaced antibodies in a commercially diagnostic test, bioMerieux's VIDAS® UP E. coli O157 (including H7). The assay is able to detect even low levels of contamination by E. coli O157:H7, a potentially lethal strain of Escherichia coli that has caused many food outbreaks in the United States, Canada, Japan, and Europe.
"This award is a great honor for us as well as an important recognition of the high level of expertise, energy and investment that we have dedicated to develop new, enhanced bacteria-recognizing molecules for use in food testing systems," said Dr. Monika Walter, Manager Operations, Hyglos GmbH. "We appreciated the potential of using biochemically re-engineered phage proteins instead of live bacteriophages, and have gained extensive know-how, as well as generated a number of patents in this field," stated Dr. Walter. "We are very pleased to have partnered with bioMerieux to develop our technology on VIDAS®, the world's leading automated system for food-borne pathogen detection."
"Through our collaboration with Hyglos, we have integrated the latest technology available for pathogen screening on the VIDAS® platform to meet the food industry's need for highly specific assays, able to detect even low levels of critical pathogens," said Alexandre Merieux, bioMerieux Corporate Vice President, Industrial Microbiology. "On behalf of bioMerieux, I would like to congratulate the Hyglos scientists for this achievement and contribution to improving food safety."
The award, sponsored by Walmart, will be presented to the scientists, represented by Dr. Walter, on August 4th during the IAFP Annual Meeting awards reception and banquet at the Anaheim Convention Center, Anaheim, Calif., USA.