Novel Applications of Protein By-products in Biomedicine

Many by-products with high protein content are generated during food processing. These residues constitute a major disposal problem which mandates value addition. On many occasions, these by-products have been employed for low-market purposes. Nevertheless, many by-products are cheap sources of proteins and they can be used to produce high-value-added products. Protein by-products from animal (eg, egg, fish, and seafood) and vegetal origin (eg, okra, seaweed, and fruit stones) have been employed to extract proteins and peptides of interest to biomedicine. Antioxidant, antimicrobial, and antiinflammatory capabilities have been observed in proteins from different food by-products. In many cases, these by-products had traditionally been employed in alternative medicine, and now there is a scientific evidence for their curative use. Nevertheless, in most cases, proteins from protein by-products are not bioactive, but peptides with therapeutic properties are encrypted within their sequences. Different digestion enzymes have been employed to release bioactive peptides from proteins by-products, alcalase and pepsin being the most popular. Different bioactivities (antioxidant, antihypertensive, anticancer, hypoglycemic, and so forth) were observed among resulting peptide extracts, antioxidant and antihypertensive peptides being the most usual.