Institute of Agri-Food & Land Use

Lecturer in Food Safety and Therapeutics

Postal Address:
Institute of Agri-Food & Land Use
Queen's University Belfast
David Keir Building
Stranmillis Road
Belfast BT9 5AG

Room:  01.325
Telephone:  +44 (0)28 9097 6546
Fax:  +44 (0)28 9097 6513
Email:  c.situ@qub.ac.uk

Administrative Responsibilities

• Module Co-ordinator ALU3035 Current Issues in Food Safety and Nutrition (Level 3)
• Module Co-ordinator ALU2010 Food Policy (Level 2)

Further details on this module can be obtained by entering the specific code into the Book of Modules.

Research Profile

Trained as a medical doctor, Dr Situ obtained a PhD in Medicine at Queen's University Belfast in 1997.  Being actively engaged in research in areas of food safety and therapeutics for seventeen years, she has developed a variety of research skills and has extensive experience in method development, validation, evaluation, and technology transfer as well as end product formation. In recent years, Dr Situ has extended her research activities to Natural Drug Discovery with major research efforts on isolation, identification and characterisation of bioactive compounds from plant-based materials that have potential for further pharmaceutical development into therapeutics to address major public health and food safety concerns.

Dr Situ's research expertise has been in therapeutic drug detection and analysis using a wide range of analytical techniques including emerging new technology platforms such as biosensors and proteomics.  She has actively participated and played major roles in serial EU Framework Programme projects including FoodSENSE (FP4), Feedstuffs-RADIUS (FP5), and BioCop (FP6).  Dr Situ is currently coordinating a new PF7 international collaborative research project (Unique-Check, 2009-2013) with over €1M funded by the European Commission.

Research Interests

• Development of rapid method for detection of therapeutics in biological samples
• Development of Immunodiagnostics for existing and emerging chemical contaminants in foods
• Discovery of novel antimicrobial compounds from natural sources
• Development of therapeutic leads for human and veterinary medicine

Research Funding

• European Framework Programme, FP7, Marie Curie Action, €387,063, 2009 - 2013
• Henry Lester Trust Grant, £2500, 2009 - 2010
• Neogen Ltd, share with Prof. Chris Elliott, £61,400, 2008 - 2011
• Invest NI Start programme, share with Prof. Chris Elliott, £260,000, 2008 - 2010

PhD Student Supervision

• Stella Wong, 2006 - The potential of naturally occurring compounds to decrease the need for use of drug in animal husbandry (Completed in Jun 2010)
• Kenneth Ngwoke, 2007 - Traditional herbal medicine - A natural and safe alternative to chemotherapeutics in food animal production (Completed in Jun 2010)
• Michalina Oplatowska, 2007 - Development of immunodiagnostic methods for rapid detection of chemical contaminants in food (Completed in Oct 2010)
• Conor Kerr, 2008 - Study of antiviral and immunomodulatory effects of traditional Chinese herbal medicine
• Andrea Leishman, 2010 - Development of an immuno-biosensor assay for rapid detection of recombinant bovine growth hormone in milk

Publications (Selected)

Cacciatore, G., Eisenberg, S.W.F., Situ, C., Mooney, M.H., Delahaut, P., Klarenbeek, S., Huet, A.C., Bergwerff, A.A., Elliott, C.T. (2009). Effect of growth-promoting 17ß estradiol, 19 nortestosterone and dexamethasone on circulating levels of nine potential biomarker candidates in veal calves.  Anal Chim Acta, 637(1-2): 351-359.

Kerr C, Ngwoke K, Wong S, Situ C (2009). Impact of extraction methodology on microbiological screening of Coptis Chinensis Franch for antimicrobial activity.  Planta Medica, 75, 957-958.

Ngwoke K, Elliott C, Situ C (2009). Microbiological screening of African indigenous plants for antibacterial activity against Escherichia coli and Listeria monocytogenes.  Planta Medica, 75, 915.

Mooney, M.H., Situ, C., Cacciatore, G., Hutchinson, T., Elliott, C., Bergwerff, A.A. (2008). Plasma biomarker profiling in the detection of growth promoter use in calves.  Biomarkers, 13: 246-256.

Chen Situ, Alastair R.G. Wylie, Alastair Douglas, Christopher T. Elliott  (2008). Reduction of severe bovine serum associated matrix effects on carboxymethylated dextran coated biosensor surfaces.  Talanta, 76: 832-836.

Stella Y.Y. Wong, Irene R. Grant, Mendel Friedman, Christopher T. Elliott, Chen Situ  (2008). Antibacterial Activities of Naturally Occurring Compounds against Mycobacterium avium subsp. Paratuberculosis.  Applied and Environmental microbiology, 74: 5986-5990.

Wong, YYS, Ngwoke KG, Grant I, Friedman M, Elliott CT, Situ C (2008). Feasibility of utilising natural products in animal production for the control of animal diseases and food pathogens.  Planta Medica, 74: 1138.

C. Situ , E. Grutters, P. van Wichen, C.T. Elliott  (2006). A collaborative trial to evaluate the performance of a multi-antibiotic enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for screening five banned antimicrobial growth promoters in animal feedingstuffs.  Analytica Chimica Acta, 561: 62-68.

Christof Van Poucke, Frédéric Dumoulin, Shirish Yakkundi, Chen Situ, Chris T. Elliott, Ellen M. Grutters, Ron Verheijen, Robert Schilt, Sune Eriksson and Carlos Van Peteghem  (2006). Banned antibacterial growth promoters in animal feed: Collaborative trial on the liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry method developed in the feedstuffs-radius project.  Analytica Chimica Acta, 557: 204-210.

Cacciatore, G., Situ, C., Merckx, T., Mooney, M.H., Eisenberg, S. Delahaut, P., Elliott, C., de Pauw, E., Bergwerff, A.A. (2006). Biomarkers revealing abuse of steroid hormones.  J Vet Pharmacol Therap., 29: 143-144.

C.T. Elliott, C. Situ, C. van Poucke  (2006). An overiew of the Feedstuffs-RADIUS project: rapid detection of banned antibiotics in animal feeds, in "Antimicrobial growth promoters - Where do we go from here", D. Barug, J. de Jong, A.K. Kies and M.W.A. Verstegen (eds.)  Wageningen Academic Publishers. pp. 195-210.

C. Situ, C.T. Elliott  (2005). Simultaneous and rapid detection of five banned antibiotic growth promoters by immunoassay.  Analytica Chimica Acta, 529: 89-96.

Marianne Caldow, Sara L. Stead, Joanna Day, Matthew Sharman, Chen Situ, and Chris Elliott  (2005). Development and validation of an optical SPR biosensor assay for tylosin residues in Honey.  J. Agric. Food Chem. 53: 7367-7370.

C. Situ and J.D.G. McEvoy  (2003). Development of an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay for the screening of virginiamycin in animal feeding stuffs.  J. Veterinary Pharmacology and Therapeutics, 26: suppl. 289-290.

Chen Situ, Steven R.H. Crooks, Andrew G. Baxter, Julie Ferguson, Christopher T. Elliott  (2002). On-line detection of sulfamethazine and sulfadiazine in porcine bile using a multi-channel high-throughput SPR biosensor.  Analytica Chimica Acta, 473: 143-149.