Food allergen profiling: A big challenge

- A reliable allergy diagnosis is crucial for a safe diet and a correct immunotherapy.
- The allergen profile of an allergenic source contributes to improve allergy diagnosis.
- Allergens so far identified are less than those contained in the allergenic sources.
- Microtechnologies help the detection of low abundant allergenic components.
- Emerging microarray-based nanotechnologies could challenge food allergens profiling.

Food allergy is an important public health and safety concern. The description of the pattern of individual allergens associated to each food is of crucial importance both for the diagnostic process and the setting of a safe diet for each allergic subject. However, we are still far from this goal as can be seen from allergen data resources like Allergome. Although some advances have been made during the last few years leading to the identification of new allergens in many allergenic sources and to their characterization, this knowledge is still fragmentary and does not allow the definition of a comprehensive pattern. The exploitation of new technologies and the improvement of those already existing has provided significant contributions, although the widespread use of specific technologies and/or methodologies without cross-checks between them may have generated some biases leading to the preferential identification of selected subsets of allergenic molecules. It would be now desirable to adopt new strategies based on a dynamic combination of different methodologies, spanning from the classic biochemistry-based ones to the innovative microtechnologies and bioinformatics, in order to obtain the best results and give a forward thrust to knowledge in this field.