An immunomagnetic separator for concentration of pathogenic micro-organisms from large volume samples

The standard method of immunomagnetic separation of pathogenic bacteria from food and environmental matrices processes 1 ml volumes. Pathogens present at low levels (<1 pathogenic bacteria per ml) will not be consistently detected by this method. Here a flow through immunomagnetic separator (FTIMS) has been designed and tested to process large volume samples (>50 ml). Preliminary results show that between 70 and 113 times more Escherchia coli O157 are recovered compared with the standard 1 ml method.