A Rapid Detection Kit For Staphylococcal

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project investigates the rapid detection ofstaphylococcal contaminated foods. Staphylococcal food poisoning continues to be a major publichealth concern being the second leading cause of bacterial food poisoning in the United States. Thebacteria secrete staphylococcal enterotoxins and as little as 0.1¿g of SEA can produce the clinicalfeature of staphylococcal food poisoning which include nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea.Staphylococcal detection kits are commercially available and fall into the three categories: gel-diffusion, reversed phase latex agglutination (RPLA), and immunoassays. Gel-diffusion kits are simpleto use but are of insufficient sensitivity for the detection of enterotoxin and require days to obtain aresult. Although results from RPLA are obtained in hours, they also fail to detect low level enterotoxincontamination. Immunoassay kits offer the best detection limit available still but require hours toperform.The goal of this research is to develop a new and innovative ELISA method and detection kit forstaphylococcal enterotoxin A. This new method will be able to detect submicrogram quantities of SEAin minutes and will be the easiest to use.