KVAL: dCod Pollution Sensing Kit - qualification project

Pollution is the largest environmental cause of disease and premature death in the world, a situation that also affects terrestrial and marine wildlife. Hence, there is an urgent need for efficient monitoring of marine and coastal waters, rivers, lakes, and land. This will be an important contribution to human and ecosystem health, and to reach the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals. A major drawback on current risk assessment is the large reliance on chemical monitoring, where actual toxicity or biological effect is not detected. In this project we aimed to develop a simple, rapid, high-throughput biosensor system for environmental monitoring and toxicity testing. The technological part of the project has so far not been successful, as we met difficulties in obtaining stable and functional expression of the receptor proteins. Given this problem, it was also difficult to start testing in collaboration with the potential user company that we had contact with.

Prosjektet har skapt interesse for metoden utover forskningsmiljøet, og vi er nå i kontakt med konsortier og industripartnere for videreutvikling. Vi har imidlertid ikke lykkes med å vise "proof of concept".