Authentication of dairy products by immunochemical methods: a review

Abstract

Antibody-based techniques for the assessment of authenticity of dairy products are reviewed in this paper. Because of the inherent complexity of the protein and peptide fractions from milk and even more so from cheese, the use of immunoreagents which are more selective than polyclonal antibodies is usually required for the assaying dairy authenticity by immunochemical methods. Significant advances in this area have been achieved over the last decade thanks to advances in the antipeptide antibody technology, based on the use of properly designed peptides which mimick specified protein substructures as model antigens. Tailor-made antibodies have been developped either for the detection of single protein components or for recognizing protein adducts created by the technological processes employed. Different reagent configurations and immunoassay formats have been devised for a number of analytical applications relevant to the quality control of dairy products, ranging from the monitoring of molecular markers to the tracing of technological processes applied to milk for cheese-making.