Research Project

Mycotoxins are secondary metabolic products of fungi. They are poisonous, carcinogens and mutagens in nature and pose a serious health threat to both humans and animals, causing illnesses and even deaths. Infants and young children remain the most vulnerable population groups to be affected. The rapid, simple and cheap detection methods of mycotoxins are highly desirable and in constant demand in the food industry. The currently proposed solution, contains an immunochromatographic strip test (ICST), a smartphone application (app) and a data analysis system to detect and quantify mycotoxins in fungal contaminants.
This project aims to develop a digital multi-color strip assay for the detection of mycotoxin that can meet these demands in the food industry. Besides, the strip assay of this project is a multiplex immunochromatographic analysis, which can detect three target toxins at once, leading to the lower cost of analysis and higher efficiency compared to single analysis ICST. Most importantly, the “digital” part of this digital multi-color strip represents the color analysis system that can give quantitative results of the toxins through a mobile phone application, which is of high portability and features rich-testing.