Currently the market for functional

Currently the market for functional proteins and peptides
is valued at $75 billion/year (Sun, 2013). Peptide based
drugs sales are growing at a rapid pace with annual sales of $20
billion corresponding to 2% of the global drug market (Sun,
2013). Bioactive peptides from food proteins offer major potential
for incorporation into functional foods and nutraceuticals.
Major drivers for bioactive peptides drugs include their role as
hormones, neurotransmitters and neuromodulaters, and low
toxicity or non-toxicity of metabolic cleavage products. Challenges
associated with the introduction of new peptide products
include proteolytic degradation, fast clearance in the body, low
solubility in water, immunogenicity (Bellmann-Sickert & BeckSickinger,
2010) and regulatory hurdles. Inactive or latent form
of bioactive peptides in parent protein can be activated by proteolysis
(Ryan, Ross, Bolton, Fitzgerald, & Stanton, 2011). Bioactive
peptides may be produced by several methods: the most
commonly employed are based on enzymatic hydrolysis by
digestive enzymes derived from micro-organisms and fermentation
of food proteins (Kim & Wijesekara, 2013). However other
methods based on chemical hydrolysis or sub-critical water hydrolysis
have also been widely researched in recent decades