LC-MS as a reliable tool for monitoring food allergens contamination

Food allergen research has considerably expanded its field of interest in recent years probably due to the increasing incidence of food allergies throughout the population. According to the last legislation issued on this issue, there is a current trend to develop reliable methods tailored to the detection of food allergens for routine-like applications. Lately, MS-based methodologies have attracted the interest of researchers owing to the great potentials offered by this technology, the ability to perform multi-allergen screening in food products. The MS approach is currently being adopted by the allergen detection community, proving to be a valid alternative to ELISA and PCR methods. MS methodologies applied to food allergen detection are herein presented.