Lactoferrin Production from Bovine Milk or Cheese Whey
© 2020 Jean-Paul Perraudin, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Today, the industrial scale production of lactoferrin is carried out in one step by extraction from bovine milk or whey. As the role of lactoferrin in the milk is to protect the liquid against the bacterial contamination binding the lipopolysaccharides (LPS) of those bacteria, it is not surprising that the lactoferrin extracted from milk is covered by bacterial LPS, losing the most part of its biological activities. It is absolutely crucial that the production of Lactoferrin consists to a two steps process. The first step consists to extract from milk or from whey a solution that we called lactenin which contains different molecules including lactoferrin, lactoperoxidase, angiogenin and some other minor components. The second step consists to purify the lactoferrin from the other components including the LPS. Only under such conditions, we could recuperate a high level pure molecule with all its biological activities as it is not done actually.
Introduction
Lactoferrin (Lf) is a single chain, iron-binding glycoprotein of the transferrin family that is expressed and secreted by glandular cells and found in the secondary granules of neutrophils from which it is released in infected tissues and blood during the inflammatory process.
Initially described as an iron-binding molecule with bacteriostatic properties, Lf is now known to be a multifunctional or multi-tasting protein. It is a major component of the innate immune system of mammals. Its protective effects range from direct anti-microbial activities, against a large panel of microorganisms including bacteria, viruses, fungi, and parasites, to anti-inflammatory and anti cancer activities. While iron chelation is central to some of the biological functions of Lf, other activities involve interactions of Lf with molecular and cellular components of both hosts and pathogens. Combined with in vitro and in vivo data, the powerful antimicrobial activities, immunomodulatory properties and prevention of septic shock, anti-carcinogenic functions and its growing importance in iron delivery and bone growth, make the Lf a very promising and fascinating molecule for health applications.
Since the first industrial production of lactoferrin and lactoperoxydase built in 1985 by the company Ol