Rapid Detection of Food Allergens by Microfluidics ELISA-Based Optical Sensor.

Xuan Weng,Suresh Neethirajan,Gautam Gaur

doi:10.3390/bios6020024

Abstract

The risks associated with the presence of hidden allergens in food have increased the need for rapid, sensitive, and reliable methods for tracing food allergens in commodities. Conventional enzyme immunosorbent assay (ELISA) has usually been performed in a centralized lab, requiring considerable time and sample/reagent consumption and expensive detection instruments. In this study, a microfluidic ELISA platform combined with a custom-designed optical sensor was developed for the quantitative analysis of the proteins wheat gluten and Ara h 1. The developed microfluidic ELISA biosensor reduced the total assay time from hours (up to 3.5 h) to 15–20 min and decreased sample/reagent consumption to 5–10 μL, compared to a few hundred microliters in commercial ELISA kits, with superior sensitivity. The quantitative capability of the presented biosensor is a distinctive advantage over the commercially available rapid methods such as lateral flow devices (LFD) and dipstick tests. The developed microfluidic biosensor demonstrates the potential for sensitive and less-expensive on-site determination for rapidly detecting food allergens in a complex sample system.

Highlights

Food allergies have become an important food safety and health concern worldwide
A series of standard solutions were compared in the on-chip ELISA assay on the antibody-immobilized microchannel by two different methods, i.e., (1) passive adsorption (PA); and
It is known that the virgin PDMS surface is hydrophobic and is good for the passive adsorption of protein molecules; it has been shown that this hydrophobicity is greatly reduced by 30 s of plasma oxidation [24]

Summary

Introduction

Food allergies have become an important food safety and health concern worldwide. In NorthAmerica, 6% of young children and up to 4% of adults suffer from food allergies [1]. Food allergies have become an important food safety and health concern worldwide. 6% of young children and up to 4% of adults suffer from food allergies [1]. Any food can cause an allergic reaction in a susceptible individual. Clinical symptoms of food allergies can range from minor digestive disorders and skin irritations to severe, potentially life-threatening symptoms. The main ways to manage food allergies are allergen avoidance or treatment of symptoms [2]. The detection of food allergens in the food matrix can be a very hard task because food allergens are usually present only in trace amounts and because sensitized individuals are reliant upon food labels to identify the possible presence of an allergenic ingredient

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Conclusion