Enzymatic hydrolysis treatment to reduce Beta-lactoglobulin antigenicity. Assessment of the method performance.

AMBROSI, VANINA; GONZÁLEZ, CLAUDIA; BRUNO MARIELA A.; POLENTA, GUSTAVO

Rotterdam

Conferencia; 7th International Whey Conference 2014; 2014

NIZO food research and EWPA

Cow Milk Allergy is the most common food allergy in infants. Children suffering from this condition are recommended to consume replacement products, known as hypoallergenic infant formulas (HIF). These HIF are usually made of extensively hydrolyzed proteins. Regarding the quality standard to be attained, Pediatrics Associations agree that clinically hypoallergenic formulas must not cause allergic symptoms when fed to 90% of allergic infants. The assessment of this requirement constitutes a challenge from the analytical point of view. In addition, studies aiming at developing processes able to reduce the allergenicity of proteins are rather scarce. We have recently developed a competitive ELISA which, contrarily to commercial methods, was adapted to measuring the remaining antigenicity of whey proteins without the need of diluting samples at high levels. In the present work, we tested the performance of the method by monitoring the remaining antigenicity of whey proteins subjected hydrolytic treatments. For monitoring purposes, we chose ¥â-lactoglobulin (BLG) as the marker protein, considering that it constitutes the main whey allergen. With that purpose, 1% w/v solutions of 80% w/w whey protein concentrate (WPC-80-1) were processed by enzymatic hydrolysis with 3 commercial proteases: bromelain, papain and trypsin (45¨¬C, E:S ratio 1:10, t=0, 30, 120 min). Untreated WPC-80-1 was used as a control. The method proved suitable to quantify the remaining antigenicity of BLG subjected to the different treatments. Regarding the efficiency of the treatments, hydrolysis with papain (120 min) was the most effective to reduce BLG antigenicity, rendering 89% of reduction. Although further studies should be conducted to validate the methodology, preliminary results are highly promising. Thus, the monitoring method can be regarded as a powerful tool to develop novel processes based on enzymatic hydrolysis. In addition, its application in quality control activities can lead to the production of high quality analytically certified HIF.