autoLAMPe (autonomous drinking water monitoring using loop mediated amplification for real-time monitoring)

The current Drinking Water Ordinance (TrinkwV as of July 2023) provides for mandatory risk management for operators of drinking water supply systems from 2029. This also includes the monitoring parameter "somatic coliphages", which has been newly included in the Drinking Water Ordinance and serves as an indicator parameter for verifying the removal effectiveness of small particles in the size range of viruses in drinking water treatment. Pseudomonas aeruginosa has now also been increasingly recognized as problematic in cold drinking water from a hygiene perspective. Contrary to its status in the amended Drinking Water Ordinance, according to which only water for filling into closed containers must be tested for the pathogen, it is a critical pathogen in the medical environment.

According to the TrinkwV, the detection of somatic coliphages and P. aeruginosa is carried out using culture-based detection. This method is labor-intensive and the analysis itself requires time to incubate the target organisms. In order to quickly and easily obtain an indication of contamination of the drinking water, such complex detection methods are unsuitable and too slow.

Many centralized and decentralized water suppliers would therefore like to have a rapid method that requires little work of its own, which can detect microbial contamination of the water at short intervals (e.g. daily) using a reliable but fast and meaningful analysis method and, ideally, also document it directly. There is currently no such method on the market.

In this project, the project partners ^CARELA® GmbH, the Institute for Medical Microbiology and Virology at the University Hospital Dresden (TUD MiVi) and the Institute for Bioprocess Engineering at TUD Dresden (TUD BioV) are planning to develop an automated monitoring system for drinking water to detect somatic coliphages and P. aeruginosa. The detection method to be used is the amplification of species-specific genetic target sequences using the LAMP method due to its high specificity and speed until a test result is available. This system should enable fast, uncomplicated, cost-efficient and automated monitoring of drinking water contamination. This would make it possible to detect these indicator parameters without time-consuming laboratory analysis and provide the operator with a warning system on site so that measures can be taken at an early stage. The system does not legally replace the findings of the accredited laboratory, but serves as a measuring element in the company's internal risk management, which is mandatory for central water suppliers.