Dr. Keith Lampel From U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) Addresses Standard Method Of Detection
Editor's Note: We continue presentations from the international Cronobacter conference held earlier this year in Ireland. In this segment, we hear from the USA's Dr. Keith Lampel from FDA.
Biography: Dr. Keith Lampel is director of the Division of Microbiology at the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA). He joined the FDA as a research microbiologist in 1987 after five years as a senior staff fellow at the National Institutes of Health, National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke.
Dr. Lampel received his PhD in Microbiology from the University of Miami and was a postdoctoral fellow at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
At FDA today, he is responsible for developing bacteriological and molecular-based methods to isolate, detect, and subtype foodborne pathogens. Dr Lampel is also the Editor of FDA’s Bacteriological Analytical Manual and serves as the FDA’s expert on the detection and isolation of the foodborne bacterial pathogen Shigella.
Other professional activities include serving on several editorial boards; NIH and USDA study panels, and ad’hoc review panels for several journals and extramural grant programs. He also serves as an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland and Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, and is a member of several PhD dissertation committees.
Summary - Development of an FDA/AOAC standard method for detection of Cronobacter
Although the number of incidences of illnesses caused by the ingestion of the bacterial pathogen Cronobacter (Enterobacter sakazakii) has not been as dramatic as other foodborne pathogens, a need remains for a robust isolation method to recover this microbe from powdered infant formula (PIF).
The current method described on the FDA website was developed in response to one such incident. Although C. sakazakii was a rather novel pathogen in an unusual food matrix, a method was devised quickly and applied to PIF samples. Unfortunately, this method requires multiple steps and at least 3-4 days for complete analysis of PIF for isolation and confirmation of C. sakazakii from the formula sample.
The revised method, however, includes a bacteriological enrichment and isolation protocol as well as the integration of a PCR-based assay. As for the bacteriological application, plating follows one-step enrichment on chromogenic agar(s) for presumptive identification of C. sakazakii. Suspected colonies are confirmed by either biochemical analysis or a real-time PCR-based assay. Therefore, isolation and identification of E. sakazakii from PIF is markedly improved and can be accomplished in 24-28 hrs.
Dr. Lampel's POWERPOINT can be found here
