Lunasin facts for kids

Lunasin is a special tiny protein, called a peptide, found naturally in foods like soy and some grains such as barley and wheat. Scientists have been studying lunasin since 1996 to learn more about its possible effects on serious health issues like cancer, high cholesterol, cardiovascular disease (heart and blood vessel problems), and inflammation.

How Lunasin Was Found

Lunasin is a peptide found in plants like soy, barley, wheat, and rye. It exists in grains from both America and older parts of the world. This small protein was first found and studied in detail from soybean seeds in 1987. A team of Japanese scientists described it as a peptide made of 43 tiny building blocks called amino acids. They noticed a unique part at its end.

Later, a scientist named Alfredo Galvez, working with Ben de Lumen at the University of California, Berkeley, identified lunasin more clearly. They found it was part of a specific protein in soybean seeds. The name "lunasin" comes from the Filipino word lunas, which means "cure." In 1999, de Lumen and Galvez received a patent for lunasin as a biological molecule.

Medical Research on Lunasin

Scientists became very interested in how lunasin might help with health. For a while, it was expensive to make lunasin in the lab, which made it hard to study. However, new ways were found to get pure lunasin from soybean flakes, which are left over after processing soybeans.

In lab tests and studies on animals, lunasin has shown signs of fighting cancer. This suggests it might have a role in chemoprevention, which means helping to prevent cancer from starting or growing.

Lunasin and ALS Studies

In 2014, a news report shared the story of Mike McDuff, a person with ALS. He said his speech, swallowing, and arm and leg strength got much better after taking a special mix of supplements that included lunasin. A group called ALSUntangled looked into his case. They confirmed that Mike McDuff had a type of ALS and truly did show big improvements.

Because lunasin was a possible reason for his improvement, Dr. Richard Bedlack from the Duke ALS Clinic decided to do a clinical trial. Fifty people with ALS took the exact same lunasin-containing supplements that Mike McDuff had used. They were watched for one year. The trial ended in September 2017.

Sadly, the study found no proof that lunasin helped to slow down, stop, or reverse ALS in any of the people in the trial. Some people in the study also had more stomach problems than expected. Dr. Bedlack concluded that lunasin was not a helpful treatment for ALS. He thought Mike McDuff's improvement was likely due to something else, like a condition that looked like ALS but wasn't, or a natural resistance to the disease.

How Lunasin Affects Cells

Lunasin was the first natural compound from food found to affect epigenetics. Epigenetics is about how your genes are turned on or off without changing the actual DNA code. This special way lunasin works was discovered by Alfredo Galvez in 1996 and was patented in 1999.