Lunasin is a

peptide Peptides (, ) are short chains of amino acids linked by peptide bonds. Long chains of amino acids are called proteins. Chains of fewer than twenty amino acids are called oligopeptides, and include dipeptides, tripeptides, and tetrapeptides. ...

found in soy and some cereal grains, which has been the subject of research since 1996 focusing on

cancer Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. These contrast with benign tumors, which do not spread. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal b ...

cholesterol Cholesterol is any of a class of certain organic molecules called lipids. It is a sterol (or modified steroid), a type of lipid. Cholesterol is biosynthesized by all animal cells and is an essential structural component of animal cell mem ...

and cardiovascular disease and

inflammation Inflammation (from la, inflammatio) is part of the complex biological response of body tissues to harmful stimuli, such as pathogens, damaged cells, or irritants, and is a protective response involving immune cells, blood vessels, and molec ...

Discovery

Lunasin is a peptide that can be found in

soy The soybean, soy bean, or soya bean (''Glycine max'') is a species of legume native to East Asia, widely grown for its edible bean, which has numerous uses. Traditional unfermented food uses of soybeans include soy milk, from which tofu and ...

barley Barley (''Hordeum vulgare''), a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley p ...

wheat Wheat is a grass widely cultivated for its seed, a cereal grain that is a worldwide staple food. The many species of wheat together make up the genus ''Triticum'' ; the most widely grown is common wheat (''T. aestivum''). The archaeologi ...

, and rye. It is found both in grains originating in the American continents as well as the old world continents. This polypeptide was originally isolated, purified, and sequenced from soybean seed in 1987. Although uncertain about the peptide’s biological activity, the Japanese team of researchers described it as a 43-amino acid peptide, noting specifically the unusual poly (L- aspartic acid) sequence at the carboxyl terminus. Subsequent research by Alfredo Galvez in the laboratory of Ben de Lumen at the

University of California–Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant univ ...

identified the peptide as a subunit of the

cotyledon A cotyledon (; ; ; , gen. (), ) is a significant part of the embryo within the seed of a plant, and is defined as "the embryonic leaf in seed-bearing plants, one or more of which are the first to appear from a germinating seed." The num ...

-specific 2S albumin. The name of the protein was chosen from the Filipino word ''lunas'', which means "cure". Lunasin was patented as a biologic molecule in 1999 by de Lumen and Galvez.

Medical research

The biological activity of lunasin was discovered by Galvez while working in the laboratory of de Lumen at UC Berkeley. There has been much research interest in the biomedical aspects of lunasin but the high cost of synthesizing lunasin made experimentation difficult. This limitation has been overcome by the development of methods to isolate highly purified lunasin from soybean white flake, a byproduct of soybean processing. In laboratory and animal experiments lunasin has shown anti-carcinogenic activity which suggests it may have

chemopreventive Chemotherapy (often abbreviated to chemo and sometimes CTX or CTx) is a type of cancer treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs (chemotherapeutic agents or alkylating agents) as part of a standardized chemotherapy regimen. Chemotherap ...

potential.

ALS treatment

In 2014, a local news program reported that a person with ALS named Mike McDuff had experienced dramatic improvements in their speech, swallowing and limb strength while taking a supplement regimen containing lunasin. ALSUntangled investigated and was able to confirm that Mike McDuff had progressive muscular atrophy a 'lower motor neuron' form of ALS, and really did experience dramatic and objective improvements. Since one possible explanation for these improvements was the use of lunasin, Dr. Richard Bedlack of the Duke ALS Clinic decided to perform a clinical trial. Fifty people with ALS were put on the exact Lunasin containing regimen that Mike McDuff had taken and were followed for a year. The trial finished in September 2017. Unfortunately, there was no evidence that lunasin slowed, stopped or reversed ALS in any of the trial participants. Gastrointestinal side effects were more common than expected in trial participants, including cases of constipation severe enough to warrant hospitalization. Bedlack concluded that lunasin was not a useful treatment for ALS and that Mike McDuff likely had some other explanation for his ALS reversal such as an ALS mimic syndrome or a genetic resistance to the disease.

Impact on epigenetic changes

Lunasin was the first dietary compound with an identified epigenetic mechanism of action. This mechanism (

histone acetylation Histone acetyltransferases (HATs) are enzymes that acetylate conserved lysine amino acids on histone proteins by transferring an acetyl group from acetyl-CoA to form ε-''N''-acetyllysine. DNA is wrapped around histones, and, by transferring an ...

) was identified by Alfredo Galvez in 1996 and patented in 1999.

References

External links

Lunasin research repositoryLunaMD Lunasin
{{Soy Soy products Peptides Cancer research