Bovine
β-lactoglobulin (BLG) is a common allergen found in
milk, and the immunoglobulin E (IgE) epitope plays a crucial role
in cow milk allergy. Therefore, targeting the IgE epitope could be
useful in accurately detecting BLG and assessing its allergenicity.
However, producing an IgE epitope-specific antibody (IgE-EsAb) through
traditional methods requires complex and time-consuming procedures.
Here, IgE-EsAb was purified from rabbit anti-BLG sera by immunomagnetic
beads in one step. Then, a sandwich ELISA (sELISA) based on the IgE-EsAb
was developed to detect BLG and predict the potential milk allergenicity
in foods. The obtained IgE-EsAb could specifically recognize the target
IgE epitope of BLG and exhibited high affinity and specificity. The
developed IgE-EsAb-based sELISA demonstrated an ultra-wide linear
range of 3.9–1.28 × 105 ng/mL, with a limit
of detection of 0.49 ng/mL for BLG. Additionally, the proposed immunoassay
showed high specificity and recoveries (91.24–109.61%). The
ability of the IgE-EsAb-based sELISA to evaluate the potential milk
allergenicity in foods was validated using sera from cow milk allergy
patients. These results suggest that immunomagnetic beads are an effective
tool for rapidly obtaining the IgE-EsAb, and our proposed sELISA could
be a reliable and user-friendly method for monitoring trace amounts
of BLG and predicting the potential milk allergenicity of food samples.