Revisiting therapeutic and toxicological fingerprints of milk-derived bioactive peptides: An overview

The putative milk-derived bioactive peptides are the fragments of specific amino acid sequences with unique biological activities. These peptides are of interest as nutraceuticals as they positively modulate human physiology. Milk-derived peptides show various bio-functional attributes such as antimicrobial, anticancer, antiinflammatory, antihypertensive, antioxidative, opioid agonist/antagonist, ACE inhibition, and mineral binding ability. They are used as functional food ingredients in various food and pharmaceutical formulations. These peptides are primarily hidden or inactive as they are encrypted in native proteins, however, they are subsequently released after gastrointestinal digestion (acid or enzymatic hydrolysis). This process has been duplicate to generate bioactive peptides at the commercial scale using bacterial fermentation or enzymatic hydrolysis. Nevertheless, the exogenous bioactive peptides generated from different food-grade enzymes or with the digestive gastrointestinal enzymes with non-identical conditions retained the potential of such peptides to have some degree of cytotoxicity or allergenicity to human cells. Therefore, the safety assessment of bioactive peptides using the suitable experimental models and randomized clinical studies are important. This review summarizes the methods used in the production of milk-derived bioactive peptides, their health-promoting attributes, and a safety perspective.