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Review
. 2020 Dec 13;12(12):795.
doi: 10.3390/toxins12120795.

Immunoaffinity Extraction and Alternative Approaches for the Analysis of Toxins in Environmental, Food or Biological Matrices

Nathalie Delaunay  1 , Audrey Combès  1 , Valérie Pichon  1   2
Affiliations
Review

Immunoaffinity Extraction and Alternative Approaches for the Analysis of Toxins in Environmental, Food or Biological Matrices

Nathalie Delaunay et al. Toxins (Basel). .

Abstract

The evolution of instrumentation in terms of separation and detection allowed a real improvement of the sensitivity and analysis time. However, the analysis of ultra-traces of toxins in complex samples requires often a step of purification and even preconcentration before their chromatographic analysis. Therefore, immunoaffinity sorbents based on specific antibodies thus providing a molecular recognition mechanism appear as powerful tools for the selective extraction of a target molecule and its structural analogs to obtain more reliable and sensitive quantitative analysis in environmental, food or biological matrices. This review focuses on immunosorbents that have proven their efficiency in selectively extracting various types of toxins of various sizes (from small mycotoxins to large proteins) and physicochemical properties. Immunosorbents are now commercially available, and their use has been validated for numerous applications. The wide variety of samples to be analyzed, as well as extraction conditions and their impact on extraction yields, is discussed. In addition, their potential for purification and thus suppression of matrix effects, responsible for quantification problems especially in mass spectrometry, is presented. Due to their similar properties, molecularly imprinted polymers and aptamer-based sorbents that appear to be an interesting alternative to antibodies are also briefly addressed by comparing their potential with that of immunosorbents.

Keywords: aptamers; complex samples; immunoaffinity; immunosorbent; matrix effects; molecularly imprinted polymers; oligosorbents; toxins; trace analysis.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Total ion chromatograms of the selected reaction monitoring chromatograms of blank mussel samples without any preparation (A), concentrated through a conventional SPE preparation (B), and using an IS (C); comparison between the calibration curve for OA standard solutions and the fitting curve for standard-spiked samples (D). Reproduced from [80]. 2019, John Wiley and Sons.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Chromatograms corresponding to the purification of a corn extract spiked with ZON on a commercially available IS (A) and on molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs) (B). Reproduced from [157]. 2019, Elsevier.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Chromatograms corresponding to the analysis of 250 nL of a beer sample (diluted in BB, 1:1) and BB spiked with 75 pg OTA extract on a miniaturized OTA OS and on the corresponding control OS coupled on-line with nanoLC-LIF. Reproduced from [187]. 2014, Springer Nature.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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