FOOD SAFETY
STARTS TO MAKE
SENSE AT MIT
An affordable, easy-to-use handheld sensor,
soon to enter the market, can indicate the
presence of bacterial contaminants in food
in seconds.
“This is a US$10 billion market
and everyone knows it.” Those
are the words of Chris Hartshorn,
ceo of a new MIT spinout — Xibus
Systems — that is aiming to make
a splash in the food industry with
their new food safety sensor.
Hartshorn has considerable
experience supporting innovation
in agriculture and food
technology. Prior to joining Xibus,
he served as chief technology
officer for Callaghan Innovation, a
New Zealand government agency.
While here, Hartshorn came in
contact with a number of different
food safety sensing technologies
that were already on the market,
aiming to meet the needs of New
Zealand producers and others
around the globe. Yet, “every time
there was a pathogen-based food
recall” he says, “it shone a light on
the fact that this problem has not
yet been solved.”
He saw innovators across the
world trying to develop a better
food pathogen sensor, but when
Xibus Systems approached
Hartshorn with an invitation to join
as ceo, he saw something unique
in their approach, and decided to
accept.
Novel liquid particles
provide quick
indication of food
contamination
Xibus Systems was formed in
the fall of 2018 to bring a fast,
easy, and affordable food safety
sensing technology to food
industry users and everyday
consumers. The development
of the technology, based on MIT
research, was supported by two
commercialisation grants through
the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel
Water and Food Systems Lab’s
J-WAFS Solutions program. It is
based on specialized droplets —
called Janus emulsions — that
can be used to detect bacterial
contamination in food. The use of
Janus droplets to detect bacteria
was developed by a research
team led by Tim Swager, the
John D. MacArthur Professor
of Chemistry, and Alexander
Klibanov, the Novartis Professor
of Biological Engineering and
Chemistry.
Swager and researchers in his lab
originally developed the method
for making Janus emulsions in
2015. Their idea was to create
a synthetic particle that has the
same dynamic qualities as the
surface of living cells.
The liquid droplets consist of two
hemispheres of equal size, one
made of a blue-tinted fluorocarbon
and one made of a red-tinted
hydrocarbon. The hemispheres
are of different densities, which
affects how they align and how
opaque or transparent they
appear when viewed from different
angles. They are, in effect, lenses.
What makes these micro-lenses
particularly unique, however, is
their ability to bind to specific
bacterial proteins. Their binding
properties enabled them to move,
flipping from a red hemisphere
to blue based on the presence or
absence of a particular bacteria,
like Salmonella.
“We were thrilled by the design,”
Swager says. “It is a completely
new sensing method that could
INFOCUS: FOOD SAFETY
10 MAY 2019