Oxidative stress arises from an imbalance between the excessive generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and the limited capacity of biological systems to eliminate them through antioxidant defenses. The accumulation of ROS can trigger a cascade of deleterious effects, leading to oxidative damages of cellular components such as lipids, proteins, and nucleic acids. This process is a key contributor to the onset and progression of various chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disorders, neurodegenerative conditions, diabetes, and cancer. To counteract these harmful effects, organisms have evolved a complex antioxidant defense system comprising both enzymatic and non-enzymatic components. Among the non-enzymatic antioxidants, bioactive peptides have attracted growing attention due to their favorable safety profiles, high bioavailability, and multifunctional bioactivities. These peptides exert antioxidant effects by scavenging free radicals, chelating pro-oxidant metal ions, and inhibiting lipid peroxidation, thereby playing a protective role against oxidative stress-induced cellular damage. Peptides comprising 2–20 amino acid residues, typically with molecular weights below 3 kDa, have demonstrated significant antioxidant activity, particularly when enriched with hydrophobic residues such as proline, valine, tryptophan, and phenylalanine.
Antioxidant peptides (AOPs) have emerged as a prominent focus in the fields of food science, cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, owing to their health-promoting properties. AOPs have been considered as promising candidates for incorporation into health-promoting food products. Their application in functional foods has gained increasing attention, owing to their dual role in enhancing nutritional content and conferring therapeutic benefits. Characterized by low molecular weight, these peptides exhibit favorable physicochemical properties, including high solubility under acidic conditions and efficient gastrointestinal absorption. These attributes contribute to their excellent bioavailability, making them particularly well-suited for inclusion in functional beverages and other nutraceutical formulations. The World Health Organization highlights the importance of antioxidant-rich diets, recognizing food as the primary and most accessible source of dietary antioxidants. AOPs exhibit the ability to scavenge free radicals while maintaining favorable characteristics such as rapid absorption and high stability. These properties contribute to their efficacy in delaying skin aging, forming the basis for their growing application in the cosmetic industry. Beyond their antioxidant capacity, bioactive peptides have also been shown to possess antimicrobial activity against skin-associated pathogenic bacteria, along with anti-aging and anti-inflammatory effects. Taken together, these multifunctional properties have positioned bioactive peptides as promising agents in cosmetic formulations aimed at improving skin health and aesthetics.
According to recent data, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved approximately 102 therapeutic peptides for a wide range of clinical applications. These approvals encompass treatments for cardiovascular diseases, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection, and central nervous system disorders, as well as other notable conditions such as osteoporosis, thrombocytopenia, Cushing’s disease, and hypoglycemia. The increasing number of approved peptide-based therapeutics highlights the growing recognition of peptides as a promising class of bioactive molecules in modern pharmacotherapy. Among them, AOPs–either naturally occurring or synthetically engineered–have attracted significant attention due to their potent free radical scavenging capabilities. AOPs have demonstrated considerable therapeutic potential in mitigating oxidative stress-related pathologies, including neurodegenerative diseases, cardiovascular disorders, and renal dysfunction. The discovery of novel AOPs represent a viable direction for advancements in functional foods, cosmetics, and therapeutic applications.
Recently, deep learning demonstrates an innovative tool for understanding the quantitative structure-activity relationship (QSAR) of chemicals and peptides. Convolutional neural network (CNN) have achieved widespread success across various domains, particularly in image processing, owing to their capability to capture and encode local spatial features. Additionally, a long short-term memory (LSTM) network is highly effective for modeling sequential data, as it can learn long-range dependencies and contextual semantics from temporal or text-based inputs. An extension of this architecture, bidirectional LSTM (BiLSTM), further enhances its performance by processing sequence information in both forward and backward directions, thereby capturing a more comprehensive contextual representation. Transformer models demonstrate strong learning potential by effectively capturing complex relationships within data using attention mechanism. These models learn intricate sequence patterns while enabling parallel processing for faster and more efficient computation. In this context, these architectures have shown great potential for classifying multi-functional peptides derived from primary protein sequences, paving the way for advanced peptide characterization and the acceleration of therapeutic discovery.
Generative models have shown significant potential in the de novo discovery of therapeutic peptides, particularly generative adversarial network (GAN) and their variants. Recent studies have showcased their successful application in identifying antimicrobial, antiviral.
