The Project

Bacterial biofilms are communities of microorganisms with a high colonizing capacity of surfaces and environments. Among the main causes of microbial contamination, biofilms can generate various health, environmental, domestic and industrial risks. For this reason, in contexts where they represent a hygienic-sanitary problem it is necessary to put in place extraordinary sanitization interventions, whose side effects, however, can have negative consequences. In order to avoid invasive interventions, it is therefore necessary to develop early detection and monitoring systems for microbial biofilms, in order to be able to use them in contexts and systems that are difficult to access (such as tubes, membranes of medical devices or household appliances). The partners, starting from the characterization analysis of the different microorganisms, during the project will be able to develop an innovative bacterial biofilm detection and monitoring system based on opto-mechanical sensors that can be widely used in different operating environments.

Smart Health specialization Area

Biomedical Technologies, in Vivo and in Vitro Diagnostics

Start date
December, 2018

End date
June, 2020

Total project
€ 510.734,58

Total grant
€ 374.125,41

Results

By the end of the BIOSAFE project an integrated opto-mechanical sensors system will be developed for the monitoring of the microbial biofilms in all environments in which these represent a health and hygiene risk. The BIOSAFE system will be developed in an operating environment that represent the household appliance industry, and it will be easily employed in various industrial sectors: from the agri-food to the biomedical, from the domestic to the environmental sector.

Target

The BIOSAFE project aims to develop an innovative and compact opto-mechanical sensors system for the monitoring of bacterial biofilm growth and the effectiveness of sanitizing treatments, in order to determine their effectiveness and the times of use and dosage. The BIOSAFE system will be optimized and validated to allow its application in the domestic equipment sector, thanks to the collaboration with Electrolux, a leading company in the household appliances market.

Partners

About us

A.P.E.Research (Applied Physics and Engineering Research) is an high tech company specialised in the production of advanced instrumentation in the field of NanoTechnologies: Scanning Probe Microscopes (SPM) and high resolution nanopositioning systems. For these instruments our company is able to offer complete customization according to the sector in which these are to be used. This type of instrumentation addresses advanced users, such as Universities and research centres in several fields and disciplines: Material Science, Surface Science, Biology, Chemistry, Medicine.
The technological core business of A.P.E. Research is the development and production of SPM Microscopes like AFM, STM, SNOM. SPM microscopes are a class of instruments able to reconstruct the sub micrometric 3D morphology of sample surface, until distinguish the arrangement of the single molecules and atoms. These microscopes do not need vacuum ambient, they operate in air, or also in gaseous or liquid environments, and they do not require preliminary treatment of the samples; they are therefore also suitable for biological samples.
A.P.E. Research has its own laboratory, BioNanoLab, for measurements and research activity; moreover, the company is involved in several Italian, European and International research projects along with research institutes and Universities to develop new scanning probe microscopes and innovative techniques for probe microscopy.

Strada Statale 14 km 163.5, Basovizza presso Area Science Park 34149 Trieste TS Italy

About us

The Friuli IRS Technologies - FIRST is a spin-off founded on September 2010 by some entrepreneurs of Veneto Region involved in the company I.R.S. S.r.l. of Padua. The main field of expertise of the company is the realization of electronic and computer systems for the industrial market for the carrying out of tests, measurements and automatic tests.

FIRST aims to provide services for the conception and implementation of data acquisition systems, test and acceptance test, in order to accelerate the production development both in the design phase and in the subsequent validation phase

via Roveredo 20/b presso il Polo Tecnologico di Pordenone. 33170 Pordenone PN

About us

In compliance with its mission, the Engineering and Architecture Department (DIA) of the University of Trieste prepares highly professional individuals and provides technical-scientific support to the economy of a large territory, whose backbone is composed of large international companies, a network of medium and small businesses and an infra-structural system with several transport and logistics companies.

Thanks to its wide and rich range of skills, the University offers didactic activities, scientific research, technology transfer and knowledge, as well as four three-year degree courses, nine specialised degree courses and a one-cycle degree course in Architecture.

The Department’s activities concern numerous research areas and are conducted in various sectors, including energy, the environment, process and product analysis, information and communication technologies and biomedical applications, in which the involved research group operates with proven skills in the field of nanotechnologies, with particular interest about biofilms.

Via Alfonso Valerio, 6/1 | 34127 Triest (Italy)

About us

Higher education, research, technology transfer, interaction with the territory and internationalization: these are the areas of intervention of the University of Udine, which promotes cutting-edge skills translated into international scientific partnerships, publications, books and patents. This is the synthesis of multidisciplinary research activities developed in departments such as DI4A - Department of Agri-Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences, with the aim of carrying out institutional research and teaching activities.

The Department activities consists of: organize study courses in the area of Agri-Food, Environmental and Animal Sciences; sustain among the several research groups the “Food Microbiology” group, whose mission is to tackle food security and quality issues through basic and applied research, generating new knowledge to address threats or risks to human health and the environment, and to develop effective means for their eradication or reduction.

Via Palladio 8 - 33100 Udine – Italy