Bioactive Peptides: Challenges and Opportunities

Dear Colleagues,

In addition to their nutritional value, food proteins provide numerous health benefits through their impact on specific biochemical pathways. Most of these activities are due to peptides encrypted in the parent protein sequences. In the scientific literature, many food peptides are described as exerting a wide range of activities potentially beneficial to health, e.g., antihypertensive, antioxidant, immunomodulatory, anticancer, antimicrobial, and hypocholesterolemic. The ability of food peptides to mediate many of these functional activities is explained by their very diversified structures. Moreover, some of them also show an intrinsically multifunctional behavior, exerting more than one of the physiological effects mentioned above. However, in order to be active, a peptide masked within a protein sequence needs not only to be released by specific and selective proteases but also to be absorbed at the intestinal level and to enter the circulation to reach the target organs inactive form.

The use of bioactive peptides use offers many advantages, including safety, good efficacy and selectivity, and low costs for the health system. For these reasons, they represent a promising tool for the development of functional foods and/or nutraceuticals aimed at improving health and preventing chronic diseases.

Bioactive peptides represent a rapidly developing field of investigation that is attracting the interest of many researchers. Thus, this Collection of Nutrients, entitled “Bioactive Peptides: Challenges and Opportunities”, welcomes the submission of manuscripts either describing original research or reviewing the scientific literature focusing on this very challenging topic.

Dr. Carmen Lammi
Collection Editor

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