Redberry, a company specialized in rapid microbiology systems, has announced the successful completion of the development of the first quantitative E. coli detection method that can deliver a result on the same day.

Based on its Red One™ platform, this new method will be tested this summer by early adopters, including Veolia Water France with the support from Veolia research department and will be more widely available in Europe by the end of this year.

Water contamination monitoring requires rapid methods
Monitoring drinking water quality is a significant challenge when controlling the risks associated with pathogens, especially infectious ones. The presence of E. coli bacteria is a recognized indicator of water potability. Operators need rapid tools to be able to react quickly once bacterial contamination appears. Currently, laboratory analysis reports can take up to 48 hours.

"A method for the quantitative detection of E. coli in less than six hours that would correlate with the
standardized method, would be a real technological breakthrough," confirms Florence Poty, from Operations Management of Veolia Water France.

Get your result on the same day
"Early detection of E. coli micro-colonies was long considered as one of the most promising technological options to obtain rapid results. Unfortunately, the low level of specific enzymes enabling such a detection remained a major roadblock to reach a robust industrial solution," explains Dr. Joseph Pierquin, Chief Technical Officer at Redberry. To achieve this unprecedented result, Redberry combined its patented bacterial staining kinetics analysis with specific enzymatic targeting, allowing the detection of very low levels of enzymes within 4 to 6 hours, previously not detected with other methods.

E. coli detection sensitivity down to 1 Colony-Forming Unit
Based on its Red One™ platform launched at the end of 2020, the French company will market, by the end of this year, a drinking water quality indicator with unprecedented time-to-result along with a level of automation and ease of use that allows its use for routine analysis as close as possible to the sampling points.

Operators will get a quantitative result down to 1 CFU per 100 mL of filtered water.

This rapid quality indicator will be available on the same platform, Red One™, as the "Direct Viable Count" solution which allows the enumeration of viable cells in drinking water in only 10 minutes. This solution has already been successfully commercialized by Redberry.

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