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Mycotoxins represent a major concern for human and animal health because of their harmful effects and high occurrence in food and feed. Rapid immunoanalytical methods greatly contribute to strengthening the safety of our food supply by efficiently monitoring chemical contaminants, so high-affinity and specific antibodies have been generated for almost all internationally regulated mycotoxins. The only exception is patulin, a mycotoxin mainly produced by Penicillium expansum for which such a target has not yet been achieved. Accordingly, no point-of-need tests commonly used in food immunodiagnostics are commercially available for patulin. In the present study, three functionalized derivatives conforming to generally accepted rules in hapten design were firstly tested to generate suitable antibodies for the sensitive immunodetection of patulin. However, these conventional bioconjugates were unable to elicit the desired immune response, so an alternative strategy that takes advantage of the high electrophilic reactivity of patulin was explored. Patulin was reacted with 4-bromothiophenol, and the obtained adduct was used to produce antibodies with nanomolar affinity values. These results demonstrated for the first time that targeting the adduct resulting from the reaction of patulin with a thiol-containing compound is a promising approach for developing user-friendly immunoanalytical techniques for this elusive mycotoxin., (© 2021. The Author(s).)

Mycotoxin monitoring is critical to ensure that foods are safe for human and animal consumption, so highly sensitive and selective detection methods are required by regulatory agencies. In this work, a new method for the analysis of patulin in fruit products was developed based on the high reactivity of the mycotoxin with sodium benzene-1,2- bis (thiolate). This previously unknown reaction occurs in buffered aqueous solution and results in a stable adduct that can be sensitively determined by tandem time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The proposed method is performed by a simple dilute-and-shoot procedure without the use of organic solvents and was able to determine patulin with an instrumental detection limit of 0.5 μg L−1. When the method was applied to the analysis of fortified apple and pear products, recovery values ranged from 95 to 100%. Finally, the applicability under real conditions was demonstrated by the successful analysis of reference and quality control materials. [Display omitted] • Monitoring of mycotoxins requires highly sensitive and selective methods. • The electrophilic properties of patulin are harnessed for detection. • The adduct is formed by reacting patulin with sodium benzene-1,2-bis(thiolate) in buffer. • No organic solvents and clean-up is required for patulin analysis. • The new method enables reliable patulin determination in food products at 10 μg L−1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]