Recent Advances in the Detection of Aflatoxin M1 in Milk and Dairy Products

There is an increasing demand in designing user-friendly specific assays for the detec-tion of analytes of interest for healthcare, environment, and agrifood. Modern bio-technology has approached this problem by using proteins, enzymes, or RNA/DNA fragments (aptamers) as biological recognition element of biosensors/assays. The idea is to exploit the extremely wide range of selective affinities sculpted into the various proteins or aptamers by biological evolution. The number of compounds specifically recognized by different proteins and aptamers is very large and ranges from small molecules to macromolecules. The advantages of using proteins and aptamers as mo-lecular recognition element (MRE) of assays/biosensors are many and include relative-ly low costs in design and synthesis, water solubility, and finally, high specificity. Many of the analytes of interest in the food control industry are relatively small. In this case, the use of aptamers and antibodies as specific MREs in designing advanced bio-sensors is widely used. Aflatoxin B1 (AFB1) is the most frequently found aflatoxin in contaminated food samples and it is one of the most potent natural compounds in terms of genotoxicity and carcinogenicity. Aflatoxin M1 (AFM1) is the hydroxylated metabolite of AFB1 and is usually found in milk and milk products as carry-over of AFB1 in animals that have ingested contaminated feed. AFM1 is found also in human milk and has been shown to be hepatotoxic and carcinogenic. Here, we present recent advances in assays and biosensors based on the use of antibodies and aptamers as MREs that have been developed for monitoring the presence of AFM1 in milk and dairy products. Limitations and advantages of aptamer- and antibody-based as-says/biosensors are discussed, as well as future research perspectives.