Novel Antioxidant Peptides

About

Our investigators have identified novel peptides from mother’s breast milk. These peptides are pleiotropic in their benefits: they possess potent antioxidant properties, anti-inflammatory, possess beneficial immunomodulatory effects and demonstrate antiviral properties. These peptides could be very useful as natural antioxidant alternatives for preventing spoilage in food and beverage products. As an example they have been used in experiments preventing creation of oxidative products in neonatal nutrition. Such oxidants play roles in a number of diseases but have shown great promise in treating premature infants via their nutrition. Premature infants in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) are at great risk to diseases related to oxidative stress due to the direct oxygen they receive, oxidative products in the IV nutrition they receive, and the fact their own endogenous antioxidant system is immature. Diseases related to oxidative stress in premature infants includes: bronchopulmonary dysplasia, necrotizing enterocolitis, retinopathy and cholestasis. Adding the peptides to the IV nutrition significantly reduced the presence of harmful oxidative products. Furthermore, in a neonatal guinea pig model of cholestasis the peptides corrected blood redox potential, reduced inflammatory markers, and stimulated the endogenous glutathione system. Thus these peptides, one of which is derived from the natural milk protein lactoferrin, could be used as an infant formula fortifier, added to IV nutrition for therapeutic benefit or to other foods/beverages to reduce the negative effects of oxidation and oxidative products.