Drug Residues
The presence or absence of residues of drugs in food commodities has major implications in respect to both food safety and international trade. The need to detect the presence of many thousands of different drugs in any given sample is a highly problematic task. As the world becomes ever more conscious of the possibility of having hazardous chemicals in our food supply chain the need for faster, more reliable and more sensitive detection capabilities becomes a greater necessity. Applications of proteomics for biomarker profiling and metabolomics for fingerprinting food biochemistry can reveal the possibility of abuse of therapeutic drugs in food animals that may result in unsafe level of hazard residues in foods of animal origin.
Current Research Projects:
Within BioCop (http://www.biocop.org), an EC funded multi-million pound research project, research at this Institute has been focused on the development of biosensor array technology to facilitate the identification of unique biomarkers to fingerprint the administration of illegal drugs in animals at low dose cocktails. Assays for the panel of biomarkers identified are being developed to allow high-throughput analysis top be performed (Dr Mark Mooney).
