Use of ATP Bioluminescence for Rapid Detection and Enumeration of Contaminants: The Milliflex Rapid Microbiology Detection and Enumeration System

Rapid microbial detection becomes increasingly essential to many companies in pharmaceutical, clinical and in food and beverage areas. Faster microbiological methods are required to contribute to a better control of raw materials as well as finished products. Rapid microbiological methods can also provide a better reactivity throughout the manufacturing process. Implementing rapid technologies would allow companies for cost saving and would speed up products release. Despite clear advantages, traditional methods are still widely used. Current methods require incubation of products in liquid or solid culture media for routinely 2 to 7 days before getting the contamination result. This necessary long incubation time is mainly due to the fact that stressed microorganisms found in complex matrices require several days to grow to visible colonies to be detected. Moreover, this incubation period can be increased up to 14 days in specific application like sterility testing for the release of pharmaceutical compounds. Although these techniques show advantages like simplicity, the use of inexpensive materials and their acceptability to the regulatory authorities, the major drawback is the length of time taken to get microbiological results. Thus, face to the growing demand for rapid detection methods, various alternative technologies have been developed. In the field of rapid microorganisms detection, ATPbioluminescence based on luciferine/luciferase reaction has shown great interest. Indeed, adenosine triphosphate (ATP) is found in all living organisms and is an excellent marker for viability and cellular contamination. Detection of ATP through ATP-luminescence technology is therefore a method of choice to replace traditional method and significantly shorten time to detection without loosing reliability.