Impact of human milk pasteurization on the kinetics of peptide release during in vitro dynamic term newborn digestion

Holder pasteurization (62.5°C, 30 min) ensures sanitary quality of donor's human milk but also denatures beneficial proteins. Understanding whether this further impacts the kinetics of peptide release during gastrointestinal digestion of human milk was the aim of the present paper. Mature raw (RHM) or pasteurized (PHM) human milk were digested (RHM, n = 2; PHM, n = 3) by an in vitro dynamic system (term stage). Label-free quantitative peptidomics was performed on milk and digesta (ten time points). Ascending hierarchical clustering was conducted on "Pasteurization × Digestion time" interaction coefficients. Preproteolysis occurred in human milk (159 unique peptides; RHM: 91, PHM: 151), mostly on β-casein (88% of the endogenous peptides). The predicted cleavage number increased with pasteurization, potentially through plasmin activation (plasmin cleavages: RHM, 53; PHM, 76). During digestion, eight clusters resumed 1054 peptides from RHM and PHM, originating for 49% of them from β-casein. For seven clusters (57% of peptides), the kinetics of peptide release differed between RHM and PHM. The parent protein was significantly linked to the clustering (p-value = 1.4 E-09), with β-casein and lactoferrin associated to clusters in an opposite manner. Pasteurization impacted selectively gastric and intestinal kinetics of peptide release in term newborns, which may have further nutritional consequences.