Studies on disease prevention and control, decontamination and sterilization, microbial adaptive responses and survival, alternative therapies, and sustainability

Abstract

This thesis describes my independent research studies starting in 1996 on five related areas that have advanced disease prevention and control including sustainable technologies to meet significant societal challenges. There are ever increasing demands for specialist foods and sophisticated devices to meet complexities of modern society including serving vulnerable groups. Whilst there is an expanding volume of published literature on developing food production, and to a much lesser degree medical devices, there is a need to understand why traditional and emerging decontamination and sterilization modalities work and what conditions or circumstances operating at the interface between microbial destruction and maintaining a desired product functionality could support microbial survivors and potentially foodborne or iatrogenic-mediated infection. There is also a dearth in knowledge surrounding the real-time detection of viable fastidious pathogenic microorganisms (such as complex parasites or drug-resistant fungi) post selection of appropriate technologies to safely treat foods and to decontaminate complex reusable medical devices. There is also a dearth of published information on appropriate cellular and molecular indicators to inform critical mechanistic information underpinning testing, verification and validation of new decontamination technologies. Elucidating holistically, the key parameters governing reliable and effective decontamination, provides evidence-based data to inform next-generation products from design thinking to automation in order to meet emerging societal needs.