The publication of the application means that the US Patent Office has disclosed the invention for public review and comment of claims contained in the patent.
Strategic Diagnostics, a provider of biotechnology-based detection solutions for a broad range of food, water, agricultural, industrial, environmental and scientific applications, announced that its patent application titled 'Bacteriophages As Selective Agents' filed in November 2004 has published.
The publication of the application means that the US Patent Office has disclosed the invention for public review and comment of claims contained in the patent.
The patent application has not been approved, or issued; therefore, it is still an application.
The company intends to apply the patent pending technology in a variety of new applications, the first as part of the company's new food pathogen line of products, specifically its new Salmonella assay, targeted for release in third quarter of 2006.
Matthew Knight, the company's president and chief executive officer, commented: "This technology enables SDI to match the best performance characteristics of a lateral flow assay with a highly targeted enrichment media, maximizing the system's overall performance".
"The new system is expected to deliver substantial customer benefits such as fewer steps to follow, lower space requirements, reduced material and time requirements, while improving both the specificity and sensitivity associated with the assay".
"These improvements are consistent with our efforts to deliver real benefits to the customer as measured in both time and money." In addition to the application in assays to detect food pathogens, application of the technology is also being pursued in larger scale environments, such as the production of ethanol, amino acids and other industrial fermentation processes.
The technology addresses problems in bio-fermentation that pertain to the microbiological contamination of the process.
This is a challenge in all processes that start with a raw or non-sterile feedstock, such as corn, or operate in a non-sterile environment.
In such applications, the customer is required to operate their fermentations in ways that generally reduce the efficiency and yield of their fermentation processes in order to prevent contamination from overwhelming the production organism.
SDI's technology allows the customer to control contaminating bacteria while optimizing the process to produce a preferential environment for the production organism.
It allows the customer to reduce the number of failed batches, increase the yie! ld per batch, eliminate the use of undesirable chemicals in their media and formulations, and better optimize the overall system chemistry for optimum production.
Knight continued: "Ethanol usage will increase, with over a billion gallons of new capacity already in development, and we are confident that we have a true value-add for this process".
"We are moving aggressively to exploit our technology, especially while the attention on this opportunity is high".
"We are learning more and more about industrial fermentation, and see many potential opportunities for SDI technology in these markets."
