Newsletter Food Allergen Community - focos

AOAC Food Allergen Community

NEWSLETTER Volume 3 | Issue 4

2012

Best wishes to the allergen community

Always looking to the bright future with the experience from the past

This is the time of the year when we think about all the achievements and projects we worked on during the last 365 days. We think of our families and friends, those who are with us, those that are away and those that left us, but are always present. We know that the future always bring new challenges that may not be easy to deal with. However, we are fortunate to live and excel another year that made us wiser and more experienced. The Editorial Board of the Newsletter wishes the Food Allergen Community a year full of successes and new opportunities to keep working together, always lean forward. The Editorial Team of the AOAC Food Allergen Community Newsletter

IN THIS ISSUE

Editorial Comment

Editorial Comment The relevance of meeting in person

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Report LC/MS/MS technologies for multiallergen detection

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Multiplexing technology for allergen detection 2 Enforcement vs. Compliance

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News AOAC Allergen Community Meeting Highlights

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The relevance of meeting in Person

Each year, AOAC hosts its international meeting and the number of attendees is constantly increasing despite a strong squeeze on travel budgets. And at this meeting, the food allergen community gets together. With the current technological advances, including online meeting platforms, forums and social media like Twitter and Facebook, wouldn’t it be sufficient to meet electronically? There is only one possible answer: no. The allergen community lives by social interactions, by communications from person to person over a beer or cocktail at the bar or at dinner. Much of what is going on, the impact of new findings is often discussed outside of meetings or email communication. A large part of incredible progress the allergen community made over the past years is owed to social interaction – something that could not have been achieved just by modern communication technologies. And even though the travel budgets are tight, the value of attending such meetings bring to the person, and ultimately also to his/her company or organization, a much greater value than the money spent on travelling. In this issue, we would like to share with the Community a summary of the activities of the Allergen Community during the AOAC Annual Meeting. Bert Popping | AOAC Food Allergen Community Newsletter Board Member

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Editorial Team

Editor in Chief: Carmen Diaz-Amigo

Editorial Members: Terry Koerner Jupiter Yeung Michael Abbott James Roberts Bert Popping

Graphic Design: Carmen Diaz-Amigo

AOAC Food Allergen Community Newsletter: [email protected]

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2012

Report Food Allergen Scientific Sessions LC/MS/MS Technologies for Multi-Allergen Detection: What Do You Have to Offer? The food allergen analytical sessions at the AOAC meeting have become very popular over the last few years and the meeting in Las Vegas was no exception. There were three allergen sessions during the meeting one of which was a round table with the title, “LC/MS/MS Technologies for MultiAllergen Detection: What do you have to Offer?” This session was chaired by Terry Koerner (Health Canada) and Stephen Lock (AbSciex) who replaced the original chairs who could not make the trip to Las Vegas. This session started with five talks and ended with some lively discussion on the use of LCMS/MS to screen for multiple allergens. The first talk titled, “The Relevance of LC-MS/MS in Allergen Detection” described some of the pros and cons of allergen detection using both LC-MS/MS and ELISA methods. This talk also described how mass spectrometry was used to detect egg protein in some complaint samples where presumably an ELISA method failed to detect the presence of egg. The next talk from Stephen Lock showed recent developments in speeding the digestion and sample preparations for MS analysis and also the development of a screening method that encompasses multiple MRM

transitions for each allergen. In the next talk Antonietta Gledhill provided some results showing how high mass resolution instrumentation and data independent analysis can be used to screen for multiple peptide fragments from one allergen and theoretically many allergens simultaneously. Jerry Zweigenbaum provided a talk on some instrumentation available for these types of studies and discussed the potential for the analysis of gluten. The final talk titled, “Approaches to Identification and Analysis of Food Allergens by LC/MS” showed how high mass resolution and independent data acquisition could be used to screen for milk and egg markers in a number of matrices, confirm the results with fragmentation patterns and quantitate the peptides present in the sample in one experiment. All of these talks have revealed the strengths and potential of using mass spectrometry for multi-allergen screening. The discussions that ensued also indicated that there is still work to be done before these methods are widely adopted. Terry Koerner | Health Canada Steven Lock | AbSciex

Roundtable on multiplexing technology for allergen detection: Where do we stand? The food industry is confronted with challenging issues and there is one headwind that could jeopardize the fragile consumer confidence it faces. Inadvertent presence of food allergens in finished products creates food safety hazards to sensitive consumers. Almost all products contain multiple allergens; hence cleaning validation or finished product testing involves multiple analyses of the same sample. While ELISA technology is the gold standard for allergen detection, commercial ELISA for multi-allergen is not currently available. This symposium, co-chaired by Drs. Jupiter Yeung, Nestlé Gerber, US, and Thomas Holzhauser, Paul-Ehrlich-Institut, Germany, put three different technology platforms, including ELISA, PCR and MS, that hold promises on multi-allergen detections on display. Various designs of multi-allergen detection by ELISA, such as semi-quantitative and quantitative enzyme and fluorescence enzyme immunoassays, were presented and critically reviewed by Dr. Sigrid Haas-Lauterbach, R-Biopharm, Germany. Several important characteristics, such as quantification, sample throughput, handling, and economic aspects would need to be taken into consideration in order to provide ELISA-based allergen multiplexing that meets the demands. Dr. Thomas Holzhauser presented several selected examples of published multi-allergen detection based on PCR technology, of which some are commercially offered. A Page 2

summary of literature data indicated comparable specificity and sensitivity as for single target PCR methods. Several formats including real-time PCR and array technology may be utilized to simultaneously detect up to 6 and even more than 10 allergenic foods, respectively. Dr. Christiane Faeste presented the technical basis and general potential of MS for multi-allergen detection. Even though currently published applications merely target single allergenic food ingredients, a first multiplexing and a first quantitative single detection method demonstrated the quantitative allergen-multiplexing potential of MS. Dr. Steven Lock presented recent examples of own development of multi-allergen MS detection that underlined the potential of MS to detect multiple allergens in a specific, sensitive, quantitative, and rapid way, and with more than 16 allergen species at present. This scientific session summarized the first attempts of the presented technologies to simultaneously detect and potentially quantify multiple allergens in one run. Further work on the development and the validation of multiplexing methods including inter-laboratory comparison is required and in progress to offer multi-allergen detection for a broader analytical community in the future. Jupiter Yeung | Nestlé Thomas Holzhauser | Paul Ehrlich Institute


2012

Report Community in AOAC Annual Meeting Enforcement vs. Compliance: Is Everybody Playing by the Same Rules? The AOAC Technical Session on food allergen entitled Enforcement vs. Compliance: Is Everybody Playing by the Same Rules comprised four presentations which provided an international perspective on analytical methods and utilisation of test results in the context of enforcement activities. Two presentations stated the Canadian and Japanese government perspectives on method selection and validation. The Canadian approach is based on the fitness for purpose concept, involving on-going validation to confirm that a method is applicable to the targeted food products. The Japanese approach is leaning toward the use of official methods. More specifically, two different ELISA kits and a confirmation method (western blotting or PCR) are required by the Japanese authorities. Japan is currently the only country that has established and enforced food allergen thresholds (10 µg soluble protein/g food). A detailed presentation provided insight into the new VITAL 2.0 (Voluntary Incidental Trace Allergen Labelling) initiative. In Australia and New Zealand a Scientific Expert Panel composed by industry, regulatory and consumer stakeholders as thresholds have developed VITAL, a risk management tool for allergen labelling which includes allergen threshold doses for several food allergens. The revised interactive grid, VITAL

2.0 is available to the industry, helping make management decisions according to the specific production activities and allergen used in a production plant. The last presentation provided a non-governmental research and testing laboratory perspective on food allergen along with the observation on the Food Industry practices. An overview of the current analytical approaches, such as ATP and protein swabs, PCR, ELISA and LC-MS/MS was presented and the advantages and limitations of these techniques were described. ELISA-based methods remain the most frequently used methods as quantitative, rugged and fast methods are now more often required to support allergen control program and visually clean standard. The selection of the optimal test method for generation of analytical data, the harmonisation of allergen testing results and the equivalence of test methods are among today’s challenges. Overall, the session clearly showed that all the stakeholders work toward the same goal: providing allergic individuals access to clear and accurate information to make an informed choice. Eric Marceau | Canadian Food Inspection Agency Terry Koerner | Health Canada

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News AOAC Allergen Community Meeting Highlights Over 70 member professionals attended the AOAC Allergen Community Meeting on October 2, 2012 during the 126th AOAC Annual Meeting & Exposition. The following is the synopsis of highlights of the meeting, not intended to encompassing details, rather all stakeholders are encouraged to attend and participate in this open meeting. After self introductions, Board of Directors Norma Hill gave an update on the Official Methods Program focusing on significant, urgent projects, and adopting a faster moving process to meet the demands. AOAC offers members the opportunities to submit and move a method to “Official Method of Analysis” status. In order not to duplicate efforts between the Allergen Community and the Stakeholder Panel on Strategic Food Analytical Methods (SPSFAM), we were informed by the Chair of SPSFAM LouAnne Blanchard that currently SPSFAM has no plan on working on food allergens. This year we put the spotlight on the guidance document prepared by the Gluten Working Group on Validation Procedure for Quantitative Gluten ELISA Methods lead by Terry Koener of Health Canada. Terry walked the Community through the process and highlights of the document and offered all members the opportunity for a final review in written comments before submitting to J. AOAC Intl. for publication.

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Recent allergen activities were reported from different jurisdictions and countries. Health Canada reported their research efforts with Canadian Food Inspection Agency on modeling gluten exposure in gluten free diet. Community cochair reminded the audience on impact of the US Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) not only on US food companies but also international companies that export foods or ingredients to US markets. When the topic on developing harmonized analytical methods was brought up, Christiane Faeste reminded the Community of the works done by the European CEN TC275 WG12 Food Allergens Group reported guidelines for analytical methods. Robin Sherlock highlighted the VITAL experience in Australia and New Zealand, in addition, an Expert Group reported on clinical thresholds for the major allergens and dose distribution relationships using statistical modeling for the development of VITaL action levels. This report will be prepared for publication in a peer reviewed journal soon. The Community was asked to submit proposals to either AOAC or co-chairs between October 9 and December 5, 2012 for next year’s AOAC allergen sessions. Jupiter Yeung | Co-Chair AOAC Food Allergen Community

Can’t wait to hear from us? Do you want to share good news with the community? Find the AOAC Food Allergen Community in

AOAC Food Allergen Community Newsletter 99 Regulatory Updates You can contribute with articles, news items or suggestions Submission deadline for the Fall 2012 issue: February 15, 2013

Send your articles to [email protected]

99 Food Industry Initiatives 99 Regional developments 99 Upcoming events 99 Questions for our Experts 99 Interested in a topic?

The AOAC Food Allergen Community is a forum serving the scientific community working on Food Allergens: The community is aimed to help AOAC INTERNATIONAL in its consensus-based scientific and advisory capacity on methods of analysis for allergens in foods and other commodities. It is also meant to serve the broader Stakeholder Community whose objectives it is to enhance the protection of food allergic consumers worldwide. Contact us at [email protected] Find us on Facebook under AOAC Food Allergen Community Page 4