ASSURED Point-of-Need Food Safety Screening: A Critical Assessment of Portable Food Analyzers

Abstract

Standard methods for chemical food safety testing in official laboratories rely largely on liquid or gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry. Although these methods are considered the gold standard for quantitative confirmatory analysis, they require sampling, transferring the samples to a central laboratory to be tested by highly trained personnel, and the use of expensive equipment. Therefore, there is an increasing demand for portable and handheld devices to provide rapid, efficient, and on-site screening of food contaminants. Recent technological advancements in the field include smartphone-based, microfluidic chip-based, and paper-based devices integrated with electrochemical and optical biosensing platforms. Furthermore, the potential application of portable mass spectrometers in food testing might bring the confirmatory analysis from the laboratory to the field in the future. Although such systems open new promising possibilities for portable food testing, few of these devices are commercially available. To understand why barriers remain, portable food analyzers reported in the literature over the last ten years were reviewed. To this end, the analytical performance of these devices and the extent they match the World Health Organization benchmark for diagnostic tests, i.e., the Affordable, Sensitive, Specific, User-friendly, Rapid and Robust, Equipment-free, and Deliverable to end-users (ASSURED) criteria, was evaluated critically. A five-star scoring system was used to assess their potential to be implemented as food safety testing systems. The main findings highlight the need for concentrated efforts towards combining the best features of different technologies, to bridge technological gaps and meet commercialization requirements.

Recent Advances in Electrochemical Sensing Strategies for Food Allergen Detection

“…Considering the consumer-friendly aspect, the extraction kit is simple to use, and the integrated communication protocols allow users to record and upload data in a cloud server. This electrochemical system indicated a development level very close to a possible market introduction and can be assumed as an ASSURED device (affordable, sensitive, specific, user-friendly, rapid, and robust and not-large electricity-dependent) according to the WHO guidelines [ 107 ].…”

“…As a consequence of the fact that allergens may show cross-reactions, it is necessary to improve multiplex analytical systems for the detection of different allergens using a single sample, so reducing the analysis time and costs and assuring consumers about the content of food, highlighting the possible presence of allergens. Another factor to consider is the possibility of using portable user-friendly devices that can allow analysis, for example, at the restaurant or at home [13,107]. In this framework, the integrated exogenous antigen testing (iEAT) is a very interesting example of a user-friendly and simple smartphone-based electrochemical food analyzer based on a sandwich immunomagnetic assay format [108] in analogy with the examples of immunosensors reported above [73,74,82,89,97].…”

Immuno-Enriched Microspheres - Magnetic Blade Spray-Tandem Mass Spectrometry for Domoic Acid in Mussels

“…However, screening assays do not provide any structural information on the contaminant detected; thus, confirmatory analysis with LC- or GC-MS/MS is needed in the case of a non-compliant screening result. 15 , 16 Apart from the well-known lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA), 17 , 18 many other formats have been developed. Paramagnetic microspheres have been employed in fluorescent (flow)-based screening bioassays.…”

“…Screening methodologies include biorecognition-based sensors or assays with monoclonal antibodies (mAb), which can provide a quick qualitative or semiquantitative result for the presence of a targeted contaminant or a family of contaminants based on the cross-reactivity profile of the mAb employed. However, screening assays do not provide any structural information on the contaminant detected; thus, confirmatory analysis with LC- or GC-MS/MS is needed in the case of a non-compliant screening result. , Apart from the well-known lateral flow immunoassay (LFIA), , many other formats have been developed. Paramagnetic microspheres have been employed in fluorescent (flow)-based screening bioassays.…”

Regulated and Non-Regulated Mycotoxin Detection in Cereal Matrices Using an Ultra-High-Performance Liquid Chromatography High-Resolution Mass Spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) Method

“…A large number of analytical methods for mycotoxin determination have been developed, with immunoassays and chromatographic analysis being the most common analytical choices [5]. In the first case, immunoassays are based on antibody recognition of a selected mycotoxin [6] and represent an affordable and simple approach that can be applied even at the point-of-need (PON) [7]. Nevertheless, most of the mycotoxin immunoassays are singleplex, meaning that only one analyte can be detected per run; they also face specificity problems due to cross reactivity with compounds structurally similar to the analyte and their results are commonly (semi)-quantitative [8].…”