Review Application of microfluidic “lab-on-a-chip” for the detection of mycotoxins in foods * Lujia Guo a, 1 , Jinsong Feng a, 1 , Zecong Fang b , Jie Xu c , Xiaonan Lu a, * a Food, Nutrition and Health Program, Faculty of Land and Food Systems, The University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia V6T 1Z4, Canada b Department of Mechanical Engineering, Washington State University, Vancouver, 98686, United States c Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, IL 60607, United States article info Article history: Received 19 August 2014 Received in revised form 24 July 2015 Accepted 26 September 2015 Available online 27 October 2015 Keywords: Mycotoxins Microfluidic “lab-on-a-chip” Agricultural and food safety Biosensors Fabrication methods abstract Background: Various foods are susceptible to contamination and adulteration with mycotoxins, pre- senting serious health risks to humans. Microfluidic “lab-on-a-chip” devices could integrate and mini- aturize versatile functions from sample preparation to detection, showing great potential in rapid, accurate, and high-throughput detection of mycotoxins. Scope and approach: This review focuses on the application of microfluidic “lab-on-a-chip” platforms to detect mycotoxins in foods. Fabrication processes and major components of microfluidic devices, as well as separation and detection methods integrated with “lab-on-a-chip” systems are summarized and discussed. Finally, challenges and future research directions in the development of microfluidic devices to detect mycotoxins are highlighted. Key findings and conclusions: Microfluidic “lab-on-a-chip” devices have a great potential for accurate and high-throughput detection of mycotoxins in agricultural and food products. © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction Mycotoxins are secondary metabolites of fungi and the major fungal genera producing them include Aspergillus spp., Fusarium spp. and Penicillium spp. These molds produce various types of mycotoxins, such as aflatoxins (AFs), deoxynivalenol (DON), zear- alenone (ZEA), fumonisin B 1 (FB 1 ), ochratoxin A (OTA) and citrinin (CIT), almost all of which are toxic to humans (Ar evalo, Granero, Fern andez, Raba, & Z on, 2011; Zheng, Richard, & Binder, 2006). Representative mycotoxins widely identified in different food matrices are listed in Table S1 (Richard, 2007; Stoloff, 1976; van Egmond, Schothorst, & Jonker, 2007). Mycotoxin contamination can occur throughout the entire food chain, from processing to transportation and storage (O'Brien & Dietrich, 2005). Besides, mycotoxin in feed could also lesion in animal origin food, exposing potential high risks to consumers (Zain, 2011). For example, AFs are the major mycotoxins which account for almost 93% of mycotoxin contamination in foodstuffs and beverage, resulting in carcinogenic cases in consumers (Petroczi, Nepusz, Taylor, & Naughton, 2011). Studies on AFs showed the LD 50 for ducklings, rats and sheep were 0.4, 1, and 500 mg/kg, respectively (Hussein & Brasel, 2001). OTA is toxic as nephrotoxic. Besides, due to possible occurrence of Balkan Endemic Nephropathy (a renal tumor), it is considered as carcin- ogen (Frenette et al., 2008; Pfohl-Leszkowicz, Petkova-Bocharova, Chernozemsky, & Castegnaro, 2002). In addition, ZEA has been associated with human cervical cancer (Shim, Dzantiev, Eremin, & Chung, 2009). Due to the potential carcinogenic, teratogenic, and mutagenic effects of mycotoxins as well as their wide existence in agricultural and food products, rapid, high-throughput and portable methods for sensitive detection are needed. Conventional methods for the detection of mycotoxins in the environment and agricultural products are primarily chromatographic-based techniques, including thin-layer chroma- tography (TLC), high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GCeMS) (Lehotay & Haj slov a, 2002; Sforza, Dall'Asta, & Marchelli, 2006). However, all these methods require extensive sample preparation procedures and they are time consuming and need highly trained personnel. In addition, large amount of hazardous regents and solvents are often required during analysis. Commercially available methods for the detection of mycotoxins are mainly * Submitted to Trends in Food Science and Technology. * Corresponding author. E-mail address: xiaonan.lu@ubc.ca (X. Lu). 1 Equal contribution as co-first author. Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Trends in Food Science & Technology journal homepage: http://www.journals.elsevier.com/trends-in-food-science- and-technology http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tifs.2015.09.005 0924-2244/© 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Trends in Food Science & Technology 46 (2015) 252e263