After our initial planning of the project, we sought input from the Battle Creek, Michigan branch of Covance Incorporated, an established pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation that provides testing services for the food and environmental industries, in addition to providing custom antibody products for the research community.

Meeting with Christine Gwinn, a microbiology supervisor in the department of nutritional chemistry and food safety, we gleaned valuable information pertaining to our project’s direction. In any application of antibodies for detection, Gwinn stressed the importance of specificity and time. For industrial use, detection methods must be highly specific, as any cross reactions reporting false positives would prove highly costly, especially in the food industry. Furthermore, detection services demand quick turn-around times for results, in order for this data to be delivered to clients on strict timetables.

Through this meeting with Christine Gwinn of Covance, we were able to gauge the practicality of our project and modify it to demonstrate the possible applications of our construct. By allowing simplified antibody purification, we could make improvements in the time it takes to go from demand to detection.