Subject PhD fellowship: Food allergen detection in milk

What: PhD candidates for IWT proposal – Chemical analysis

Summary: As national reference laboratory for allergens and in the framework of the FOD health, food chain safety and environment project ALLERSENS, ILVO aims to development a mass spectrometric strategy to detect allergens in processed food. In particular this part of the project will focus on the detection of milk allergens.

Co-operation: ILVO-UZ Gent-VIB

ILVO: Technology and Food Science Unit (Prof. Marc De Loose, dr. Christof Van Poucke)

UZ Gent: Allergy network (Prof. Phillippe Gevaert)

VIB: Medical Biotechnology Center, UGent (Prof. Kris Gevaert)

When: Augustus 2015 – August/September 2019

Who may apply: Master of Science (chemistry, (bio) engineering,…), Master of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Master in Biomedical Sciences, …

Where: Melle – Merelbeke, Belgium

Project description

The prevalence of food allergies is increasing worldwide, with a higher prevalence in children (4−8%) compared to adults (1−5%). A food allergy is caused by a reaction of the immune system to normally harmless food components, mostly proteins. Symptoms can vary a lot and mostly occur in the mouth (swelling of lips or tongue, mucosal itch), the gastrointestinal tract (cramps, vomiting, diarrhea), the skin (hives, rashes or eczema) and the respiratory tract (wheezing or difficulty breathing) but can even result in severe systemic reactions such as anaphylactic shock. Up to now no cure has been found and the only solution for patients suffering from food allergy is avoiding the allergenic foodstuff. In order to protect the consumer, labeling of 14 ingredients that have the potential to cause an allergenic reaction is required by European legislation (regulation 1169/2011). Unfortunately, incidental presence of allergens in food is also possible due to cross-contamination and is not covered by legislation. Even though detection methods with a good sensitivity and specificity have already been developed and are commercially available for a variety of food allergens (methods based on protein binding, DNA detection and physico-chemical methods), they are still subject to variability and inaccuracies due to amongst others matrix effects (e.g. modification of targeted compounds during processing), sampling (e.g. heterogeneous distribution), non-uniform use of standards and the lack of internal standards.

The overall aim of the project is to develop an analytical strategy that allows to check the correctness of the labeling of food, with particular attention to milk allergens, and the monitoring of food for the unintentional presence of these allergenic ingredients. The project aims to identify a set of target proteins/peptides that are stable during food processing and deliver information on the link between allergenicity and food processing. The identification of the stable peptides will be based on in house High Resolution Mass Spectrometry (HRMS) analysis of food matrices with the allergenic ingredient mentioned above that have undergone different processing steps. This project is part of a larger project in collaboration with the CER Groupe Marloie and the University of Namur where the final goal is to develop a multi allergen (milk, egg, hazelnut, peanut) LC-MS/MS method, which could serve as a golden standard for industry to evaluate existing and alternative detection methods: ELISA, flow cytometry, real-time PCR and droplet PCR.

For more information about or if you are interested to apply for this project please contact ASAP:

Marc De Loose, marc.deloose@ilvo.vlaanderen.bemailto:marc.deloose@ilvo.vlaanderen.be , +32 (0)9 272 28 42

Christof Van Poucke, christof.vanpoucke@ilvo.vlaanderen.bemailto:christof.vanpoucke@ilvo.vlaanderen.be , +32 (0)9 272 30 64 Kris Gevaert, kris.gevaert@vib-ugent.bemailto:kris.gevaert@vib-ugent.be , +32 (0)9 264 92 74