Liquid Chromatography and Mass Spectrometry in Food Allergen Detection

Abstract

Food allergy is an important issue in the field of food safety because of the hazards for affected persons and the hygiene requirements and legal regulations imposed on the food industry. Consumer protection and law enforcement require suitable analytical techniques for the detection of allergens in foods. Immunological methods are currently preferred; however, confirmatory alternatives are needed. The determination of allergenic proteins by liquid chromatography and mass spectrometry has greatly advanced in recent years, and gel-free allergenomics is becoming a routinely used approach for the identification and quantitation of food allergens. The present review provides a brief overview of the principles of proteomic procedures, various chromatographic set ups, and mass spectrometry instrumentation used in allergenomics. A compendium of published liquid chromatography methods, proteomic analyses, typical marker peptides, and quantitative assays for 14 main allergy-causing foods is also included.

Food Analysis: Present, Future, and Foodomics

“…This is the case of liquid chromatography online coupled to mass spectrometry (LC-MS) or tandem MS (LC-MS/MS) which have been extensively applied to ensure food safety [52,53], particularly to analyze antimicrobials residues in food of animal origin [54], antibiotics in food samples [55], clenbuterol residues [56], food allergens [57], and so forth. Other hyphenated techniques such as gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) or capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS) have also found interesting applications to analyze essential oils [58] or food contaminants [59].…”

“…Although immunological methods are currently preferred, the determination of allergenic proteins by LC-MS has advanced in recent years, and it is now frequently used for the identification and quantitation of food allergens [57]. In spite of these advances, confirmatory alternatives are still needed to be able to face other additional problems originated, for example, by food matrix interferences or food processing, which may not influence allergenicity but do impair allergen detection.…”

The Use of Peptide Markers of Carp and Herring Allergens as an Example of Detection of Sequenced and Non-Sequenced Proteins

“…Therefore, it is important to develop analytical methods for the identifi cation of allergens. Mass spectrometry is one of the methods recommended for this purpose (3)(4)(5).…”

Present and Future Challenges in Food Analysis: Foodomics

“…advanced in recent years and it is now frequently used for the identification and quantitation of food allergens. 25 In spite of these advances, confirmatory alternatives are still needed able to face other additional problems originated e.g., by food matrix interferences or food processing, which may not influence allergenicity but do impair allergen detection. In this context, microfluidics technology has also shown interesting applications for food analysis, although more effort has to be put on the development of multi-purpose microfluidic platforms that integrate multiple unit operations for real food sample analysis.…”