Chemistry and Function of Antioxidative Food Factors in Disease Prevention

Abstract

In 1984, "Functional Foods Project" started in Japan to prevent the so-called life-style related diseases such as diabetes, atherosclerosis, osteoporosis, allergies, can cer, and even some kinds of infectious diseases. In 1992, a new academic research project entitled "Analy sis and Molecular Design of Functional Foods" has been created by 59 research teams from 23 Universi ties. The design and construction of "Functional Foods" would be positioned to use for targeting to enrich the concentration of the quantities of functional food components, or to remove some unfavorable toxic components. In 1990, "Designer foods" project started in USA, and new concept, "Food Phytochemicals for Cancer Prevention," has been created. In 1995, Interna -tional Conference entitled "Food Factors for Cancer prevention" was organized in Hamamatsu and more than 1000 participants attended this conference. ICoFF '99 and ICoFF '03 were held in Kyoto and Tokyo , respectively, and concept of "Food Factors" has been proposed not only for cancer prevention but also for health promotion and disease prevention. Although "physiological function" means many different types of biological activities, much attention has been focused on prevention of oxidative stress and modification of immune systems. Our research group has been involved in developing novel and convenient evaluation systems for oxidative stress by application of immunochemical methods to prevent the life-style resystems for oxidative stress by application of immu nochemical methods to prevent the life-style related diseases such as cancer, atherosclerosis and diabetes. Oxidative stress may cause free radical chain reactions to produce deleterious modifications in membranes, proteins, enzymes and DNAs, and we have developed more than 30 different monoclonal and polyclonal anti bodies which are specific these oxidatively modified lipids, proteins, phospholipids and nucleonic acids etc. April 2003, eight major food companies in Japan started to create a new consortium by collaboration with Profs. T. Yoshikawa (Kyoto Pref. Univ. Med.), S. Arai (Tokyo Agr. Univ.) and myself. The main purpose of this consortium is to find novel protein biomarkers that are specific to life-style related diseases and de velop "Antibody Chips" for detection and quantific (Nagoya University Graduate School of Bioagricultural Sciences)