Welcome to the BEEP-C-EN project !

Biosensor for Effective Environmental Protection and Commercialization - ENhanced


Coordinator:
Giovanni Basile

The Central Administrative Management will be carried out by the project Coordinator Dr. Giovanni Basile, directly assisted by Dr. Francesca Vergari and Dr. Daniela Giannini. The coordinator will be assisted by a technological transfer committee under the responsibility of  Dr. Katia Buonasera and Dr. Giuseppina Rea.

Beep-c-en is a project funded by the European Commission within the Call FP 7-SME-2008-01.
The project deals with the integration of innovative biosensor research and technology and their exploitation by industry and/or other socio-economic entities in the fields of environment and agro-industry. The aim is building up a biosensor modular industrial platform, which can be easily adopted for the detection of pesticides, heavy metal and organic compounds in water.

The team is composed of  3 Research Institutes:

  • National Council of Research - Institute of Crystallography (I)
  • Université de Perpignan Via Domitia - BIOMEM, Centre de Phytopharmacie (F)

  • EADS - European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (D)

and 5 companies* (3 SMEs and 2 end-users):

  • Biosensor S.r.l. (I)
  • DropSens, S.L. (E)
  • Uniscan Instruments Ltd (GB)
  • Vitens N.V. (NL) (End-user)
  • RIVM - National Institute for Public Health and the Environment(NL) (End-user)
* Enervit S.p.A., among the Italian leading companies in food and nutrition, expressed interest as potential end-user of the prototypes under development, which contributes to the industrial exploitation of project results.


With a total of 6 involved EU Member States (Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, France, Germany, The Netherlands).

The main objectives of the team are:

- select the material to be used as biomediator. Different enzymes, proteins and microrganisms will be considered as sensing material for the detection of the most common pollutants found in water.  Banks of mutants already under study will provide engineered organisms sensitive to pesticides (e.g. diazines, ureas, triazines), heavy metals (e.g. mercury, arsenic, chromium, lead) and CBRN (Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear) agents. Stability and lifetime of the selected materials will be tested in order to define suitable protocols for the biomediator immobilization.

-characterize the immobilized engineered biomediators. Reproducibility, easiness and stability of immobilization procedure, response to the interested classes of compounds and biologic activity lifetime will be tested.

- manufacture optical and electrochemical biosensors. Three sensors, namely MultiLights, MultiAmps and MultiTasks, will be assembled in a full system platform characterized by high specificity, high selectivity, high sensitivity, room temperature operation, simple use, low-cost, fast response time, minimum sample pre-treatment, small dimension and ease of transport for in situ measurements, real time online measurements and easy interface with integrated circuits enabling cost effective manufacturing.

- experimental in-field validation. Selected representatives of pesticides, heavy metal and CBRN agents will be measured in a reproducible automatic mode at EADS’ and Vitens’ laboratories and industrial facilities.