Food allergyis a common condition worldwide whose prevalence is rising dramatically in both developed and developing countries. It is estimated that globally over 6% of the population, around 200 to 250 million people, suffer from some food allergies, affecting more than 17 million people only in Europe. Three million of European allergic patients are younger than 25 years old and the sharpest rise in food allergies is amongst children and young people.

AllerScreeningproject has focused on translating an optical diagnostic technology already proven and its read-out-platform (MOX), to the clinical routine, addressing a priority healthcare unmet need from the laboratory to the clinic. For instance, the consortium realized that the development of the tool for measuring highly multiple diagnostic kits. This new and innovative cost-effective sensing system for the in vitro component diagnosis of food allergies may help clinicians to detect food allergies through a simple test using sera by a competitive cost. Briefly, the most relevant improvements of the project are:

1)      The improvement of a prototype optical device (POC) capable of reading 3 cells in 2 hours, to the MOX which can read 60 cells in 12 minutes.

2)      The biofunctionalization on the SU-8 resin surface of the kits with different 20 allergens in triplicate.

3)      The standardization of an immunoassay using bio-nanoparticles for the specific detection of IgE, without any labelled secondary antibodies.

The technology developed has been positioned in a TRL6, that is, the AllerScreening system has been proved in a real scenario similar to the final ones in case it will be upgraded to TRL9.