Identification of antihypertensive peptides in nutraceuticals by capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry.

We present capillary electrophoresis-mass spectrometry (CE-MS) in combination with advanced chemometric tools for the analysis of bioactive compounds in food, in particular for the identification of antihypertensive peptides in a nutraceutical derived from a bovine milk protein hydrolysate. Different extracts of the nutraceutical were analyzed by CE-MS, and the electropherograms were processed using a novel data analysis workflow that included regions of interest (ROIs) compression and multivariate curve resolution alternating least squares (MCR-ALS). MCR-ALS permitted the description of the nutraceutical extract as ten characteristic components with their electrophoretic profiles and mass spectra. Twenty-two compounds were tentatively identified as antihypertensive bovine casein fragments through a mass search in a database of bioactive peptides. The identity of 17 antihypertensive peptides was reliably confirmed by capillary electrophoresis-tandem mass spectrometry. The proposed analytical approach demonstrated the potential to obtain a characteristic and activity-related fingerprint for quality control and authentication of the antihypertensive nutraceutical.