Development of a sandwich ELISA and immunochromatographic strip for the detection of shrimp tropomyosin

Shrimp tropomyosin is one of the most important causes of shellfish allergy. The objective of this study was to develop a highly sensitive and specific immunoassay for the detection of shrimp tropomyosin in food. Ten monoclonal antibodies against shrimp tropomyosin were obtained by fusion and cell screening. We found two optimum monoclonal antibodies (mAbs); mAb 2 was used as the capture antibody, and HRP-labelled mAb 3 was used as the detection antibody. Using this pair of mAbs, a sandwich enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) was developed with the limit of detection (LOD) of 0.45 ng/mL. Cross-reactivity with other food allergens using this method was found to be negligible. An immunochromatographic assay strip was also developed for the rapid detection of shrimp tropomyosin with the LOD of 0.5 ng/mL. The results demonstrated that our developmental methods represent a useful tool for the detection of shrimp tropomyosin in food.