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Strengthening Our Health

Utilize Electrospraying of Natural Polymers to Fabricate Micro- and Nano-particles and Evaluate Their Physicochemical and Functional Properties for use as Food Ingredients and Packaging Materials

Reduce Food-borne Illness Through the Development of a Field Deployable Biosensor for Detection of Salmonella in Foods

Advanced Descriptive Sensory Methods and Techniques for Better Understanding of the Sensory Profile of Medicinal Plants

Use Microbiology and GIS Tools to Reduce the Risk of Antibiotic-resistant Bacterial Contamination of Fresh Vegetables by Determining and Communicating the Risk Factors, Persistence, and Distribution of Antibiotic Resistance that Occurs Through Irrigation Practices  

Reduce Foodborne Illness Through Research to Iintegrate Ultraviolet (UV) Light-emitting Diode Systems with Computational Modelling to Reduce Chemical and Biological Contaminants in Foods and Food Contact Surfaces

Examine the Role of Bioactive Compounds in Common Foods in Breast Cancer Prevention

Utilize electrospraying of natural polymers to fabricate micro- and nano-particles and evaluate their physicochemical and functional properties for use as food ingredients and packaging materials
Dr. Ying Wu
This project aims to develop research capability in fabrication of advanced functional materials at Tennessee State University.  The project will improve teaching and research by training and equipping our undergraduate students with the skills and knowledge essential to become highly competitive in the fast growing technological market.  We will synergistically combine existing strengths in natural novel materials, including those derived from agricultural products with electrospinning and electrospray expertise.  Encapsulation technology is of great importance in the protection and delivery of key compounds in various applications.  Electrospray is an emerging technology with low cost, non-thermal and simple process.  It can produce smaller particles with narrow size distribution.  In recent years some innovations have been introduced into this technology such as coaxial electrospray and emulsion electrospray.  Fabrication of micro- or nanoscale particles using synthetic or fossil- based materials will create harmful problems to environment or human health due to their toxic residue or pollution.  Meanwhile, they cannot meet the demands of new applications such as oral delivery or tissue engineering.  Therefore, natural polymers are attracting great attention in recent years due to their biodegradability, biocompatibility, easy design and preparation, and structure variations.  The intellectual merit of this research resides in the exciting research projects at TSU enabled by this high impact and centralized fabrication resource.  New capabilities will enable particle and fiber fabrication at nano- and microscales from natural polymers via electrospray and electrospinning techniques.  These capabilities, combined with the new substrate materials identified from natural products, will support existing and new research activities.  New soft matter fabrication will enhance the overall regional polymeric research capacity, enabling the development of new functional materials for important applications in biological and environmental applications.  It will develop research and teaching capability of faculty and students and attract more students with interests across the entire spectrum of food chemistry and food materials and engineering disciplines, inevitably leading to cross-fertilization of ideas and techniques.  The equipment and supporting infrastructure to be built will provide students with hands-on experience in advanced materials fabrication and characterization, allowing them to attain invaluable knowledge about how things work at the nano-, micro-scale, as well as the assembled function-by-design materials that cannot be developed using the resources in PI's labs.  Currently, the fabrication of advanced functional materials using natural polymers by electrospray is significantly less explored.  This study will provide important information regarding the application of natural polysaccharides in electropray and the properties of the fabricated nano- and micro particles.  The result of this project may lead to an effective venue for fabrication of natural based functional materials and their applications in food safety, quality and product development fields in the future.  

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Reduce food-borne illness through the development of a field deployable biosensor for detection of salmonella in foods
Dr. Fur-Chi Chen
Salmonella is the leading cause of deaths and hospitalizations related to foodborne illness.  This research will focus on developing a rapid, low-cost, sensitive and accurate detection method that will address the priorities for improving food safety surveillance.  The objectives are to (1) design a process to separate and concentrate Salmonella from food samples suitable for field-testing and (2) develop and validate an electrochemical biosensor protocol as a filed-deployable detection technology.  The separation and concentration process of Salmonella from food samples will be optimized, and the performance of the process will be evaluated.  Experiments will be conducted to develop a filed-deployable electrochemical biosensor protocol and to validate the biosensor technology in field settings.  The new biosensor technology will be promoted to the interested industry and government laboratories through exhibitions and onsite demonstrations.  The reduction of human illness from foodborne pathogens has significant economic importance.  Adoption of the new technology will result in increased accuracy/sensitivity and reduced time/costs of food safety surveillance.  

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Advanced descriptive sensory methods and techniques for better understanding of the sensory profile of medicinal plants
Dr. Ramasamy Ravi
The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 80% of people worldwide rely on herbal medicines for some aspect of their primary health care needs.  Around 21,000 plant species have the potential for being used as medicinal plants, and a significant percentage of people are using medicinal plants.  Expenditures on plant derivatives is increasing dramatically due to their nutritional and medicinal values.  The world market for herbal medicine including herbal products and raw materials is estimated at $62 billion and is expected to grow to $5 trillion by 2050.  In the US alone, use of botanicals has increased by 380% between 1990 and 1997.  In 2001, the US spent $17.8 billion on dietary supplements, of which $4.2 billion was for botanical remedies.  According to a survey of the US public, people use herbal medicines because they prefer natural remedies (47%), there are fewer side effects (17%), they are more efficient (17%), less expensive (10%), and milder (8%).  Medicinal plants and various foods are important sources of bioactive compounds with multiple beneficial effects for health.  Medicinal plants are used worldwide as an alternative and/or a complementary medicine.  Medicinal plants and their components possess a range of beneficial preventive properties and show many promising effects for various health problem.  Aroma is one of the most important quality indicators for many medicinal plants and their products, specifying important quality characteristics in the raw material.  Traditionally aroma analysis is performed using classical techniques such as GC, GC-MS and GC-O, while electronic noses (e-nose) can provide many advantages over traditional techniques of aroma analysis.  Comparison of volatiles between various samples is not possible in traditional methods while the e-nose provides comparison between samples on their volatiles in one plot.  The e-nose can generate aroma profiles in a rapid, efficient manner.  Further the e-nose volatile patterns can be stored and retrieved in future for unknown volatile comparisons and can be used as a library for future use.  

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Use microbiology and GIS tools to reduce the risk of antibiotic-resistant bacterial contamination of fresh vegetables by determining and communicating the risk factors, persistence, and distribution of antibiotic resistance that occurs through irrigation practices
Dr. Agnes Kilonzo-Nthenge
Microbial quality of water has been used to assess reclaimed water, drinking and recreational water supplies, and the effects of agriculture on the environment.  However, it is essential to assess the microbial quality of surface irrigation water used for the production of fresh produce, especially in small scale farms that often have limited resources.  Consumption of fresh produce, particularly eating raw vegetables, represents a route of direct human exposure to soil microorganisms.  It is important to assess and determine microbial hazards and distribution of antibiotic resistant microorganisms in fresh produce growing areas.  The presence of antibiotic-resistant bacteria on fresh produce pose health risks to the consumers.  Fresh produce contamination in the field can occur through contaminated soil, irrigation water or by deposition of feces by livestock or wild animals.  It has been identified that irrigation water is a possible pathway of transmission for antibiotic resistant bacteria.  Antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB) from the environment can be transferred to humans through foods including fresh produce.  Fresh produce specifically is an ideal vector for ARB due to frequent raw consumption.  The need for data on possible contamination sources including surface irrigation water becomes essential.  Irrigation water is a major source of fresh produce contamination with antibiotic-resistant bacteria (ARB).  It is important to educate all produce growers on practical ways to mitigate ARB in fresh produce, especially small scale growers in rural areas who often face barriers in produce production.  The increase in consumer-driven concern for food safety regulations poses an additional challenge for small-scale fruit and vegetable growers.  There is need for guidelines concerning farming practices, ARB in irrigation water, development of affordable water disinfection skills to lessen ARB on irrigated produce.  The results obtained from the proposed study will highlight antimicrobial resistant Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp. in produce farms and be used to determine risk factors and microbial resistance within small-medium scale produce farms.  This project will develop ResistanceMaps to demonstrate the temporal variations of the ABR Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp. patterns in irrigation water from fresh produce production areas.  ResistanceMaps will be used to interpret resistant patterns and distribution of Escherichia coli and Enterococcus spp. in irrigation water over diverse geographical locations.  The findings of this study will be used to develop and deliver educational materials for growers using pond, creek, and river irrigation water in small to medium scale farms. 

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Reduce foodborne illness through research to integrate ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diode systems with computational modelling to reduce chemical and biological contaminants in foods and food contact surfaces Dr. Ankit Patras
There has been a growing appreciation of the benefits of non-chemical-based treatments as a greener process for pathogen inactivation on food contact surfaces and in beverages.  As a result, there is increased interest in applying ultraviolet light (UV) technology to inactivate bacterial biofilm-formers and on food contact surfaces the food industry.  Major hurdles and challenges of using UV-C photons to decontaminate food contact surfaces include low light penetration through microbial biofilms.  The research will be expanded into beverages where novel optical devices will be evaluated.  We hypothesize that effective inactivation of target microbial biofilm-forming pathogens on surfaces can be achieved through complete understanding of their spectral characteristics together with effective UV dose delivery.  This project is intended to address the challenges of UV technologies by developing a novel high-power UV Light emitting diode (LED) system and by assessing the sensitivity of foodborne biofilm-forming bacterial pathogens and spores using the generated-germicidal UV regime.  This project is targeted to develop decontamination strategies for foodborne biofilm-forming pathogens (Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella enterica and Escherichia coli O157:H7) and on food-contact surfaces and beverages and account for their spectral characteristics.  This project is aimed at engineering, design, and validation of UV LED systems that can deliver the efficient inactivation dose and to determine inactivation kinetics of the target bacteria and spores.  The novel system developed using this approach in this project will result in a breakthrough in current practices of surface and fluid disinfection in the United States and is likely to extend to finding solutions for global food safety issues.  

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Examine the role of bioactive compounds in common foods in breast cancer prevention
Dr. Hongwei Si
Epidemiological studies suggest that diets containing high levels of bioactive phytochemical ingredients contribute to the low incidence rate of breast cancer in Asian women.  However, the high concentrations of food-derived chemicals in cells and animals cannot be achieved in humans by consuming foods or supplements.  Our innovative approach to bridge this concentration gap between epidemiological and basic studies is to combine two or more food-derived chemicals.  In our preliminary studies, combinations of bioactive compounds luteolin (LUT) and indole-3-carbinol (I3C), present in many commonly consumed foods such as celery, peppers, broccoli and kale exerted a synergistic inhibition of breast cancer cell proliferation and tumor growth in murine xenografts, while the individual chemical at the same dosages did not have an inhibitory effect.  Notably, the combination of LUT and I3C has a higher anticancer capacity and much lower side effects in endothelial cells compared to current standard medications.  In the present study, we propose that combined low levels of luteolin and I3C prevent/treat breast cancer through inhibiting breast cancer cell growth and metastasis, by mechanisms including apoptosis, and regulating the immune system.  First, we will investigate how combined LUT and I3C synergistically regulate cell proliferation, apoptosis, and metastasis in cells and xenograft mice.  Second, we will determine if the combination of LUT and I3C has similar anti-breast cancer effects and mechanisms in patient-derived xenograft (PDX) mice.  Third, we will examine whether dietary intake of the combinations of LUT and I3C inhibits tumor growth in xenograft mice.  This project, if it is accomplished, will build the solid foundation of the concept that breast cancer can be at least partly prevented/treated by consuming common vegetables such as celery and broccoli.