A novel approach to the recovery of biologically active oligosaccharides from milk using a combination of enzymatic treatment and nanofiltration

A new easily scalable approach to the recovery of biologically active oligo saccharides from milk has been developed which relies on the combination of enzymatic treatment of defatted milk using beta-galactosidase and nanofilt ration. It was shown that enzymatic hydrolysis of lactose significantly imp roves the efficiency and selectivity of membrane-based separations. With th e best membrane, as much as 6.7 g of oligosaccharides (containing very litt le contaminating lactose) could be obtained from one liter of defatted huma n milk in just four nanofiltration cycles. The human milk oligosaccharides recovered by this method were shown to inhibit binding of intimin, an adhes ion molecule of enteropathogenic Escherichia coli, to epithelial cells in v itro. No significant difference in the oligosaccharide profile between samp les prepared by this method and conventional gel-permeation chromatography was found. The developed approach is also suitable for the recovery of subs tantial quantities of tri- and tetra-saccharides from caprine milk. (C) 200 0 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.