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Description

WHY PAY ATTENTION TO HYPERTENSION？

Hypertension has become one of the common chronic diseases, and the prevalence rate has increased year by year. However, Hypertension has no obvious symptoms, it can cause fatal cardiovascular disease such as heart attack, stroke, and others. According to the World Health Organization, Hypertension causes at least 45% of heart disease deaths and 51% of stroke deaths. About 9.4 million people worldwide die from complications of hypertension every year [1]. In China, according to statistics, the prevalence of hypertension in Chinese adults is 23.2%, and the awareness rate, treatment rate and control rate are 51.6%, 45.8% and 16.8%, respectively[2]. Raising awareness of this “silent killer” is one of the important means of preventing high blood pressure. Shenzhen polytechnic is well-known as volunteer school. At our iGEM project brainstorming, members who participated in activities such as volunteer activities of common publicity and clinic for chronic prevention found that many of the passersby who measured blood pressure indicated that they did not have high blood pressure, but their blood pressure values were actually higher than normal. We are confused about that phenomenon. High blood pressure is coming quietly. Isn't the current treatment effective?

“EVERY MEDICINE HAS SOME TOXICITY”

At present, the treatment of hypertension is mainly medical treatment. Commonly used antihypertensive drugs include calcium ion antagonist (CCB), angiotensin converting enzyme inhibitor (ACEI), angiotensin converting enzyme II receptor blocker (ARB), diuretics and beta blockers and a fixed ratio combination preparation consisting of the above drugs. In addition, alpha blockers or other types of antihypertensive drugs can sometimes be used in certain high blood pressure populations[3].

With so many types of drugs, high blood pressure should have been well controlled, but it is not. After inquiring some doctors, we find that few patients are in full compliance with their doctor's orders because they think “Every medicine has some toxicity”, an old saying from chinese ancestors. And what they don’t realize is that hypertension may require lifelong medication. In this case, their conditions seldom improve.

“HOMOLOGY BETWEEN MEDICINE AND FOOD”

"Homology between medicine and food" is one of the concepts in traditional Chinese medicine，which means there is no clear-cut distinction between food and medicine (Because the Chinese ancestors found that food, to some extent, has curative properties). Such idea has been deeply inscribed in Chinese people's mind for several thousand years. Therefore, they prefer to relieve the physical discomfort by taking nourishing food rather than taking medicine.

But finding a food can lower blood pressure seems to be very difficult.

“ANTIHYPERTENSIVE PEPTIDE”

Fortunately, over the past three decades, food derived antihypertensive peptides have gained increasing interests as safer alternatives to synthetic drugs. It was first extracted from the snake venom by Ferreira in 1970 and then more and more scholars extracted antihypertensive peptide from animal and plant proteins and marine organisms[4]. A number of reports from in vivo studies using spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHRs) propose a significant reduction of hypertension with ACE-inhibitory peptides and show that they are safe and have almost no side effects compared with synthetic drugs[5].

METHODS FOR PREPARING AHPs

At present, antihypertensive peptides are mainly prepared by enzymatic hydrolysis, fermentation, chemical synthesis, and biosynthesis. Enzymatic hydrolysis or fermentation has the problems of low content of blood pressure lowering peptide of natural raw materials, multiple separation and purification links, low yield and high product cost. And most of the chemical synthesis methods are constrained by industrialization due to high cost, many side reactants and compound residues[4, 6].

However, the biosynthesis overcomes some of the above shortcomings with the unique advantages of clear target, high yield of AHPs and mild conditions. Therefore, we determined to prepare AHPs by biosynthesis.

Method	Characteristic
Enzymatic hydrolysis	low yield
Chemical synthesis	toxic reagent residues
Fermentation	blindness
Biosynthesis	Green and efficient

HOW TO PREPARE THE AHPS USING BIOSYNTHESIS?

The advantages of biosynthesis are unmatched by other methods. So we choose to implement our project in the following ways:

(1) Design of new high activity antihypertensive peptide technology by protein structure fingerprint technology.

(2) We designed the following blueprint to lower blood pressure.

REFERENCES

[1] Global Overview of Hypertension. World Health Organization. 2013

[2] Hu Shengshou, et al. Summary of the 2018 Report on Cardiovascular Diseases in China .Chinese Circulation Journal. 2019, 37(3):209-220

[3] Liu lisheng, et al. China Guidelines for the Prevention and Treatment of Hypertension 2018.

[4] Jocksan I. Morales-Camacho, et al. Insertions of antihypertensive peptides and their applications in pharmacy and functional foods. Applied Microbiology and Biotechnology. 2019, 103(6):2493-2505

[5] Seung Yun Lee, et al. Antihypertensive peptides from animal products, marine organisms, and plants. Food Chemistry, 2017, 228: 506–517

[6] Zhao Shuang, Liu Kun-lun, Chen Fu-sheng. Research progress on the food-born ACE inhibitory peptides. Grain and fat. Vol. 2017, 30(3): 37-40 March 2019, Volume 103, Issue 6, pp 2493–2505