Quantitative analysis of shrimp allergen in food matrices using a protein chip based on sandwich immunoassay

Food allergy is increasingly becoming a serious concern these days. With packaged foods becoming the norm of the day, food allergy cases out of accidental consumption are becoming rampant, thereby generating great risks for the subjects involved and prompting food authorities in different countries to formulate new regulations about displaying food allergen data on food labels. Detection of food allergens is conventionally carried out by ELISA or PCR tests. These techniques are limited in that they can only detect one or few allergens at one time. Therefore, in the present study a novel sandwich protein chip assay was developed for quantitation of shrimp allergens in food matrixes. The shrimp allergen model used 3D aldehyde slides as the solid carrier, rabbit antisera as the capture reagent, and biotin-labeled monoclonal antibody as the detector reagent. Resulting antigen-antibody complexes were visualized in the presence of commercial strepavidin labeled with Cy3 to produce fluorescence for quantification. With the LOD of the protein chip being 0.054 mg tropomyosin/kg, the protein chip can quantify down to 0.096 mg tropomyosin/kg. The protein chip was not found to be sensitive to other kinds of foods but cross-reacted to some extent with allergens of some other crustaceans. The recoveries ranged from 69.2 to 99.9%, while the intra- and inter-assay coefficients of variation were < 13% and < 19%, respectively. It seems that the new assay is reliable enough to detect shrimp allergens in food and food products and help minimize the instances of shrimp allergy. It is also possible to use the protein chip for simultaneous detection of other food allergens.