Screening system for the Maillard reaction inhibitor from natural product extracts

An assay for the Maillard reaction has been developed to screen efficiently inhibitors from natural resources such as extracts of plants. The fluorometric analysis of fluorescent material based on advanced glycation endproducts (AGEs) was applied to measurement of an inhibitory index of the Maillard reaction to detect all of the inhibitors at each step of the complicated reaction. To solve the two major problems, slowness of the reaction rate and the existence of interfering substances such as quencher and fluorescent material in the screening sources, we devised the following procedures. Slowness of the reaction rate was solved by raising the reaction temperature to 60°C at which the conformation of bovine serum albumin (BSA) did not change greatly. To remove the interfering substances, AGEs-BSA was precipitated from the reaction mixture. Thus, an efficient assay system by measuring the fluorescent intensity based on AGEs was established to isolate the glycation inhibitors from natural product extracts.