Immobilization of Enzymes for Enhanced Production of Protein Hydrolysate and Lactose Free Products from Whey

A challenge in the production of dairy-derived hydrolysate products is efficiently generating ahigh-yield and in the case of peptides specific and active material. Enzymes enable the use ofmild reaction conditions and processing techniques compared to standard chemical methods.However the use of commercial enzymes and enzyme mixes presents its own challenges. Highquality commercial enzyme products are expensive for a single use and some enzymes canproduce allergic or toxic responses if left in products. Extensive purification steps after anenzyme-driven reaction adds to production expenditures. A potential solution to control processcosts is to immobilize the enzymes enabling enzyme recovery and reuse.The objectives of the Phase II work are to build on successes from the Phase I effort ultimatelyproducing immobilized enzyme products that meet the needs of current whey-based productmanufacturers. Two commercial proteases Alcalase® and Protamex® and a -galactosidase willcontinue to be developed using our patented immobilization technology ImmobiZymeâ„¢. InPhase I we demonstrated the enzymes retained their functionality following immobilization andtheir susceptibility to microbial contamination and cleaning was evaluated. More significantlythese proof-of-concept pellets maintained >90% of their starting enzymatic activity following350 hours reacting with substrates. Phase II efforts will focus on taking these materials from toproducts through the following objectives: 1) optimizing pellet stability with respect to activityunder reaction conditions 2) developing a pellet-compatible cleaning protocol for removal ofmicrobial contaminants between uses 3) producing immobilized enzymes at the pilot-scale 4)performing initial toxicology studies and 5) demonstrating performance under pilot-scaleconditions both internally and through the efforts of potential vendors.The primary markets for the technology developed during this Phase II effort will be milk proteinhydrolysates (MPH) and lactose free (LF) products. The 2018 MPH market volume wasestimated at 84.7 million kg and the reported 2020 U.S. LF milk product market volume isestimated at 804 million kg. This technology also has potential to be utilized for hydrolysis ofother protein sources (wheat pea soy and insect) for hydrolysate and bioactive peptide markets.The primary market advantage of ImmobiZymeâ„¢ comes from its potential for cost savings. Thenumber of times it can be reused is critical to the economics of this application. Reuse is mainlydetermined by retained activity and retained pellet on a batch-to-batch basis. Based on a potential30 cycle lifetime for the ImmobiZymeâ„¢ pellets from the Phase I data the retained activity andmass fraction of enzyme on the pellets and current enzyme use rates (typically 1%-5% of themass of substrate) for these applications; the potential combined market for ImmobiZymeâ„¢- based hydrolysis products is 3 million kg/year and a potential for 50% cost savings on annualenzyme expenses.