Mollusk-Derived Peptides at the Food-Pharma Interface: Bioactivities, Preclinical Evidence, and Development Prospects

Mollusk-derived peptides are an expanding class of marine bioactive molecules that link food-protein utilization with pharmaceutical peptide discovery. They are derived from taxonomically and biologically diverse sources such as edible gastropods, bivalves, cephalopods and highly modified conopeptides from cone snails. However, there is a lack of integrated understanding of sources, structures and functions of these peptides and their potential applications in food science, pharmacology, and venom research. In this review, the current knowledge related to mollusk-derived peptides from a food-pharma perspective is summarized, including taxonomic sources, tissue substrates, enzymatic hydrolysis, purification, sequence identification, reported bioactivities and structure-function relationships. The peptides derived from food are primarily short linear peptides from muscle, mantle, viscera, collagen, gelatin and processing by-products. These peptides have mainly been investigated for antioxidant, Angiotensin-I-converting enzyme inhibitory, anti-inflammatory, mineral-binding, gut-health, and metabolic activities. However, the biological functions of endogenous peptides and peptides from cone snails are often associated with cysteine-rich scaffolds and disulfide connectivity and post-translational modifications that confer antimicrobial activity, neuromodulation, and receptor selectivity. For these systems, the activity depends not on any single parameter but on the peptide length, amino acid sequence, charge distribution, hydrophobicity, amphipathicity, secondary structure and chemical modifications. Further progress requires improved sequence-level validation, mechanism-driven bioassays, in vivo and clinical evidence, safety assessment, and feasible purification and delivery strategies for mollusk peptides into functional foods, nutraceuticals and peptide-based therapeutics.