Determination of mycotoxins in food and pharmaceuticals by immunochemical analysis
- Mycotoxins are toxic secondary metabolites produced by filamentous fungi. The contamination of mycotoxins in food and feed products has been recognized to be an important safety issue for human and animal health. In the context of food safety, medical herbs nowadays are also considered as potential source of mycotoxins. Considering that mycotoxins are generally stable compounds and could not be destroyed completely during food-processing operations, prevention of contamination is identified as main issue.
Currently, biochemical, and immunochemical methods based on the use of antibodies as a specific recognition bioreagents are increasingly found to be applied in screening. Along with good common enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), more and more widely used method is fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA). These methods help to monitor of many toxic substances in large number of samples and carried out quickly, easily, cheaply, and give good results in quantifying the oneMycotoxins are toxic secondary metabolites produced by filamentous fungi. The contamination of mycotoxins in food and feed products has been recognized to be an important safety issue for human and animal health. In the context of food safety, medical herbs nowadays are also considered as potential source of mycotoxins. Considering that mycotoxins are generally stable compounds and could not be destroyed completely during food-processing operations, prevention of contamination is identified as main issue.
Currently, biochemical, and immunochemical methods based on the use of antibodies as a specific recognition bioreagents are increasingly found to be applied in screening. Along with good common enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), more and more widely used method is fluorescence polarization immunoassay (FPIA). These methods help to monitor of many toxic substances in large number of samples and carried out quickly, easily, cheaply, and give good results in quantifying the one or more substances. That is why the use of immunochemical methods of analysis, such as ELISA and FPIA, is the most promising for solving this problem.
Thus, the aim of our work is to optimize the determination of mycotoxins by ELISA and FPIA in medical herbs. We selected antibodies and a tracer for the FPIA, then we constructed obtained a calibration curve and determined the sensitivity of this method for the samples in aqueous media. Then, the optimal sample preparation was elaborated: for spiked nuts samples were selected and prepared and a calibration curve was obtained with respect to the matrix effect. After that, the analysis of spiked nuts samples was performed by ELISA and FPIA and the sensitivity of both methods was compared.…