Effect of a different mobile phase on LC–ESI–MS/MS performance for the identification and quantitation of polar and nonpolar heterocyclic amines in cooked chicken

Development of a two-step pretreatment and UPLC-MS/MS-based method for simultaneous determination of acrylamide, 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, advanced glycation end products and heterocyclic amines in thermally processed foods

A two-step pretreatment and UPLC-MS/MS-based method was established to extract and determine 17 thermal processing hazards (TPHs) simultaneously. The first step was to extract acrylamide (AA), 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and free heterocyclic amines (HAs). The bound HAs and advanced glycation end products (AGEs) were released by acid hydrolysis in the second step. A fairly good separation was achieved within 7 min. Almost all TPHs showed high correlation coefficients (R2 >0.999) in their respective linear ranges. The accuracy ranged from 98.13 to 100.96%. LODs and LOQs were in the range of 0.01-0.89 µg/L and 0.02-2.96 µg/L, respectively. The method was successfully applied to four representative food products, including high-starch, high-protein, high-fat and high-sugar foods, showing acceptable recoveries, intra-day and inter-day precisions. Moreover, PCA was performed to visualize the association between TPHs and food matrices. The developed method provided technical support for the formation and control researches of TPHs.

High-throughput quantification of eighteen heterocyclic aromatic amines in roasted and pan-fried meat on the basis of high performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-orbitrap high resolution mass spectrometry

Triple quadrupole mass spectrometry has been the main technique for HAAs analysis in recent decade, while it requires extensive optimization of compound-dependent parameters. A novel method based on HPLC-Q-Orbitrap-HRMS was developed firstly for simultaneous determination of eighteen HAAs. Extraction and purification conditions were optimized and the developed method was validated in terms of linearity, accuracy and precision. Results indicated eighteen HAAs and two internal standards could be separated in 12 min using a gradient elution program. The full MS/dd-MS² scan was adopted for analysis, which indicated favorable recoveries (71.3-114.8%) along with LODs and LOQs in the ranges of 0.02-0.6 and 0.05-2.0 μg/kg, respectively. Internal standards used for calibration could effectively reduce quantification errors produced by matrix effects. The validated method was successfully applied for HAAs analysis in roasted and pan-fried meat and was confirmed to be an alternative method when triple quadrupole mass spectrometry is absent in lab.

Preparation of a Broad-Spectrum Heterocyclic Aromatic Amines (HAAs) Antibody and Its Application in Detection of Eight HAAs in Heat Processed Meat

Heterocyclic aromatic amines (HAAs) are potential human mutagens and carcinogens mainly generated in heat-treated meat. In this work, a broad-spectrum HAAs antibody was prepared and used to develop an indirect competitive ELISA (ic-ELISA) for simultaneous determination of eight HAAs, including 2-amino-3-methylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoline (IQ), 2-amino-3,4-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f] quinoline (MeIQ), 2-amino-3-methylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (IQx), 2-amino-3,8-dimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (MeIQx), 2-amino-3,4,8-trimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (4,8-DiMeIQx), 2-amino-3,7,8-trimethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (7,8-DiMeIQx), 2-amino-3,4,7,8-tetramethylimidazo[4,5-f]quinoxaline (4,7,8-TriMeIQx), and 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo[4,5-b]pyridine (PhIP) in grilled and fried meat samples. The limit of detection (LOD, calculated as IC₁₀) and 50% inhibition concentration (IC₅₀) of ic-ELISA were 5.29 μg/L and 99.08 μg/L, respectively. The detection results of this ic-ELISA were in good agreement with the detection results of UPLC-MS/MS in real samples, which indicated that this ic-ELISA can be applied to detect the total content of eight HAAs in heat processed meat. Use of a broad-spectrum antibody is an efficient strategy in developing immunoassay for simultaneous measuring food risk factors with similar structure.