17 hours Ago By News Desk
More than 100 projects have received support as part of the 2024 European Research Council (ERC) proof of concept competition. Each grant is worth €150,000 ($157,300) and helps to bridge the gap between the results of research and early phases of commercialization. Food fraud and mislabeling harms consumer trust and poses risks to safety and quality.
Matthew Collins’ 18-month project aims to tackle these challenges. Collins is from the University of Cambridge in the UK. The project combines two methods to verify proteins in food and animal feed.
One is peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF), a technique that identifies proteins by analyzing their unique molecular patterns. The other is an approach called LAP-MALDI, a laser-assisted method that enables detection of proteins with better precision. Together, these tools create a faster and more reliable way to ensure authenticity.
Current methods often struggle with high costs and reduced accuracy when food is heavily processed. Other food-related projects include Matjaz Humar’s work on edible lasers for the safety and authentication of food and pharmaceuticals; Marc Friedlander’s project on food quality control by RNA profiling, and Paolo Falcaro’s research on a food responsive sensor for colorimetric observation. Maria Leptin, president of the European Research Council, said: “These proof of concept grants will help more ERC grantees to move their research results towards the market.
This is useful support on their path towards commercialization and scale-up.” (To sign up for a free subscription to Food Safety News, click here .).
