Scalable Purification and Characterization of the Anticancer Lunasin Peptide from Soybean

Lunasin is a peptide derived from the soybean 2S albumin seed protein that has both anticancer and anti-inflammatory activities. Large-scale animal studies and human clinical trials to determine the efficacy of lunasin in vivo have been hampered by the cost of synthetic lunasin and the lack of a method for obtaining gram quantities of highly purified lunasin from plant sources. The goal of this study was to develop a large-scale method to generate highly purified lunasin from defatted soy flour. A scalable method was developed that utilizes the sequential application of anion-exchange chromatography, ultrafiltration, and reversed-phase chromatography. This method generates lunasin preparations of >99% purity with a yield of 442 mg/kg defatted soy flour. Mass spectrometry of the purified lunasin revealed that the peptide is 44 amino acids in length and represents the original published sequence of lunasin with an additional C-terminal asparagine residue. Histone-binding assays demonstrated that the biological activity of the purified lunasin was similar to that of synthetic lunasin. This study provides a robust method for purifying commercial-scale quantities of biologically-active lunasin and clearly identifies the predominant form of lunasin in soy flour. This method will greatly facilitate the development of lunasin as a potential nutraceutical or therapeutic anticancer agent

Child Growth According to Maternal and Child HIV Status in Zimbabwe

ZVITAMBO trial was supported by the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) (R/C Project 690/M3688), United States Agency for International Development (USAID) (cooperative agreement number HRN-A-00-97-00015-00 between Johns Hopkins University and the Office of Health and Nutrition—USAID) and a grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA. Additional funding was received from the SARA Project, which is operated by the Academy for Educational Development, Washington, DC, and is funded by USAID’s Bureau for Africa, Office of Sustainable Development under the terms of Contract AOT-C-00-99-00237-00, the Rockefeller Foundation (New York, NY) and BASF (Ludwigshafen, Germany). A.O.O. was supported by IHV-UM NIH Fogarty AIDS International Training Research Program (AITRP, D43 TW001041). C.E. is funded by the National Institute for Health Research. A.J.P. is funded by the Wellcome Trust (108065/Z/15/Z)