**3.6 Anti-inflammatory**

Inflammation is a natural immune system reaction to fight disease. Inflammation is generally associated with cancer because it involves the interaction of various immune cells that can lead to signals of proliferation, growth and invasion of tumour cells [107, 108]. There are two pathways of inflammatory-cancer interaction, namely the extrinsic pathway (inflammation facilitates cancer development) and the intrinsic pathway (genetic changes causing cancer to stimulate the inflammatory process to support tumour development) [109]. Bastiaannet and co-workers [110] and Crawford [111] reported that anti-inflammatory therapy could reduce or prevent cancer risk. This report shows the interaction between inflammatory-cancer. So far, lunasin, VPY and -glutamyl peptides have anti-inflammatory activity [70]. Lunasin exerts an anti-inflammatory effect by inhibiting the Akt-mediated NF-kB pathway [57]. BPs from legumes, particularly soybeans, can regulate several inflammatory markers, which include prostaglandin E2 (PGE2), nitric oxide (NO), induced nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), cyclooxygenase 2 (COX2), cytokines, and chemokines [70]. BPs from *Phaseolus vulgaris* L (the result of hydrolysis of alcalase and digestive enzymes pepsin and pancreatin) also showed similar results, inhibiting important markers and mediators of the inflammatory process [71]. Therefore BPs from *Phaseolus vulgaris* L can assist in managing diseases associated with chronic inflammatory processes such as T2DM and cancer. Several peptides from *Phaseolus vulgaris* L with anti-inflammatory activity are low molecular weight (MW) and contain 3–11 amino acids (**Table 3**). A lunasin-like peptide with low MW (5 kDa) inhibited the most potent pro-inflammatory markers than peptides with MW 8 and 14 KDa [112]. Biopsy of the small intestine mucosa showed repair in intestinal inflammation after supplementation of tempe in the diet [8]. Tempe contains many easily digestible compounds such as peptides and free amino acids that are affecting intestinal growth.
