Lunasin

The discovery of the Lunasin peptide was a fortunate accident or serendipitous finding. While Dr. Galvez was conducting initial laboratory research focused on seed and cell development at the University of California at Berkeley, he isolated a protein from soy without any prior knowledge about it. He observed that the peptide was binding to something in a cell and causing a disruption in cell division, similar to developing cell division. Dr. Galvez hypothesized that Lunasin could work within cancer cells since they divide rapidly, and conducted further tests to explore its potential anti-cancer effects. Based on Dr. Galvez’s initial findings, the anti-mitosis and apoptosis effects of Lunasin were published in the Nature Biotech. (1999) 17:495-500 study and the inhibitory effects of Lunasin on oncogene and carcinogen-induced tumor formation were published in the Cancer Research (2001) 61:7473-7478 study.