Development of a novel method for identification and quantification of birch pollen allergens in parallel

Background Determining the content of individual allergens at isoform level has become important for comprehensive standardization and quality control of allergen products as the content of individual allergens has an impact on the potency of allergen extracts. Mass spectrometry (MS) is a dominant and indispensable proteomic tool that has been employed for allergen analysis. Therefore, the main focus of this study was to develop a MS method capable of identifying peptides for quantification of individual Bet v 1 isoforms, and to quantify the entire protein profile including allergenic and non-allergenic proteins of birch pollen in a single run.