Raytheon developing portable device to assess potentially dangerous bacteria

Raytheon, as part of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s Friend or Foe program, is developing a portable biosurveillance device capable of evaluating bacteria and whether or not they could be harmful to people.

It is an area the company has identified as currently underdeveloped. While there are biosurveillance measures out there, they are ineffective against undiscovered bacterial strains or those engineered to specifically avoid detection — a problem Raytheon believes can be overcome through the examination of bacteria behavior.

While most bacteria are harmless and can even be beneficial, Raytheon’s Dr. Aaron Adler wants to create a system that functions through sensor arrays and screening. It would fit into a tiny cube that tracks respiration, consumption of certain nutrients and metabolite production. From there, it would extract bacteria expected to be dangerous and deliberately expose it to substances that mimic human tissues.

“To get a reliable risk assessment, we need to understand not just the bacteria’s genetic makeup, or genotype, but how it functions – its phenotype,” Adler, principal investigator for the Friend or Foe program at Raytheon BBN Technologies, said. “We’re looking at ways to subject the bacteria to a gauntlet of behavior screenings so we can determine its ability to cause disease.”

In this way, Raytheon hopes to make a field-deployable device capable of being used by either civilians or military personnel.