Validation of a Low-Cost and Highly-Sensitive Method for Determination of Eighteen Mycotoxins in Food Matrices Using SPE and LC/MS/MS

Introduction

Mycotoxins are metabolites produced by certain fungi in high humidity environment in food. Due to potentially mutagenic and carcinogenic, mycotoxins are monitored in food around the world strictly. Authorities such as European Union (EU) impose strict regulations on mycotoxins in food. To analyze trace levels of aflatoxins, immunoaffinity and SPE were developed and used for sample clean-up before analysis. However, there is not a single cartridge that can recover all the 18 monitoring mycotoxins and the cost of immunoaffinity cartridge is rather high. We developed and validated a SPE approach using ISOLUTE cartridge under two conditions to recover efficiently 6 polar and 12 less-polar mycotoxins for high sensitivity LC-MS/MS analysis to achieve the LOQs required by EU regulation.

December 6, 2019 GMT