Achievements of the RIANA and AWACSS EU Projects: Immunosensors for the Determination of Pesticides, Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals and Pharmaceuticals

In the last 15 years the research projects supported by the European Commission River Analyser (RIANA) and Automated Water Analyser Computer Supported System (AWACSS) have developed quick, intelligent and cost-effective biosensors that allow the monitoring of different organic pollutants, ranging from regulated ones such as pesticides to emerging contaminants such as pharmaceuticals and endocrine disrupting compounds. Herein we give an overview of the aims, scope and main achievements of the RIANA and AWACSS projects as well as details about basic technology, immunoassays, software and networking developed within the research project. We also report on the systems performance, real water sample measurements and validation of the biosensors with conventional analytical methods. The biosensors developed were able to measure several organic pollutants at low nanogram per litre level in an analysis taking only a few minutes without any prior sample pre-concentration or pre-treatment steps. This work is a proof-of-concept that biosensors are a practical alternative or complementary methodology to traditional chromatographic techniques.