Sylvie van Zandycke (1); (1) DSM Food Specialties,

IBD Symposium
Tuesday, August 16  •  8:15–11:30 a.m.
Tower Building, Second Level, Grand Ballroom

Gluten proteins and peptides present in beer mainly originate from the grains used: namely barley and wheat. Although partially hydrolyzed during the brewing process, large gluten fragments remain present in the final beer. Celiac and gluten-sensitive individuals may therefore experience an adverse response when drinking beer. AN-PEP is a proline-specific endopeptidase that can be used during fermentation to selectively degrade proline-rich gluten peptides and proteins. The unusually high percentage of proline in known celiac-related gluten epitopes makes it an ideal substrate for AN-PEP. It was confirmed that in beers prepared with AN-PEP, gluten levels were well below 20 mg/kg based on the established competitive R5 ELISA method. A sensitive LC-MS/MS method developed in-house was used to identify the peptides. Beers brewed with a conventional process displayed evidence of epitope-containing peptides, even in beers that contained less than 20 mg/kg. This was not the case for beers brewed using AN-PEP where no intact epitopes were found. Even though the MS method is qualitative and not quantitative, it provided a more detailed view of the fate of gluten during brewing. Specifically, these data indicate that ANPEP is able to degrade all known immunogenic gluten epitopes in barley malt beer.

Sylvie studied biochemical engineering and fermentation at the Institute Meurice (Brussels, Belgium); she completed her degree in 1996. She then obtained her Ph.D. degree on Saccharomyces cerevisiae in 2000 from Oxford Brookes University in the UK. After that Sylvie was employed as project manager for the brewing consultancy firm SMART Brewing Services until 2004, where she left the UK for Montreal, Canada, and accepted a post with Lallemand. As project manager for their genetic identification laboratory she focused on yeast and bacteria used in alcoholic beverage production. In 2007 Sylvie became technical sales manager for Lallemand Brewing, looking after dry yeast and nutrition products on a global basis. At the end of 2011, she joined DSM Food Specialties as technical service manager for brewing enzymes in North America and she is currently global key account manager for brewing enzymes.