• Food Science and Biotechnology
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.489-494
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• 2008

In order to develop a potent antidementia $\beta$-secretase inhibitor from phytochemicals, $\beta$-secretase inhibitory activities of extracts from many medicinal plants and herbs were determined. Water extracts from Rubus coreanus showed the highest $\beta$-secretase inhibitory activity of 84.5%. After purification of the $\beta$-secretase inhibitor from R. coreanus using systematic solvent extraction, ultrafiltration, Sephadex G-10 column chromatography, and reverse-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a purified $\beta$-secretase inhibitor with $IC_{50}$ inhibitory activity of $6.3{\times}10^3\;ng/mL$ ($1.56{\times}10^{-6}\;M)$ was obtained with a 0.08% solid yield. The molecular mass of the purified $\beta$-secretase inhibitor was estimated to be 576 Da by liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and $\beta$-secretase inhibitor also is a new tetrapeptide with the sequence Gly-Trp-Trp-Glu. The purified $\beta$-secretase inhibitory peptide inhibited $\beta$-secretase non-competitively and also show less inhibition on trypsin, however no inhibition on other proteases such as $\alpha$-secretase, chymotrypsin, and elastase.