Science Buddies: "Ask an Expert"

Dear expert,
I am Nathanael and working on a project to extract bromelain for medicinal purposes. My country produces a lot of pineapples and I wish to work on the enzyme from the fruit.I need your help to decide on the best method to extract bromelain .Secondly, I need to know the specific method and composition of making bromelain ointment. I hope to utilise this for treating sports injuries and muscular pain. I have done a lot of search but have come to a dead end and need your help .It is best if I could come up with a spray for the treatment of muscular injuries as it has been found to be most effective. But to date , I have not been able to find the other ingredients besides bromelain that goes into the spray. I would appreciate your help tremendously. Thank you

Hi,

Here is some background information on Bromelain

http://www.umm.edu/altmed/articles/bromelain-000289.htm

Here is a paper describing the reaction of crude commercial bromelain extract with carboxymethylcellulose to form an insoluble product:

http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/pd ... .tb00482.x

Here are papers describing the purification of bromelain:

http://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/picren ... obtype=pdf

http://www.jbc.org/cgi/reprint/235/1/99.pdf

A patent that may be useful:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars ... RS=6974594

Here is a laboratory experiment describing preparation of crude bromelain (at end of document).

http://www.zoo.utoronto.ca/able/volumes ... /16-glider

There is an extensive literature on bromelain and its uses, of which I have only scratched the surface. If you are not having success finding what you need, I suggest you enlist the aid of a reference librarian at your local library or, better yet, visit a college or university library. I am certain a search of Chemical Abstracts would yield much useful information, as would a search of the US Patent Office archives, as would PubMed. You can also find more using a Google search.

I hope this gets you started. Good luck!

Barrett L. Tomlinson

Hi lee hock huat,

Supplementing barretttomlinson's excellent post, a good one-stop-shop for information about bromelain is to supply "bromelain" to answers.com (or http://www.answers.com/Bromelain?cat=health). Here you will get on one page:

- the dictionary entry for bromelain, including its pronunciation
- its entry in the Alternative Medicine Encyclopedia
- its wikipedia entry

Hi,

Here are patents for preparing bromelain for debrideing skin injury that seem to directly answer your query:

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars ... /Bromelain

http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Pars ... /Bromelain


Best regards,

Barrett L. Tomlinson

Dear buddy expert,
Thanks for your prompt replies.However,after searching through the suggested websites I have decided against continuing this project. Instead, I have another idea which is to treat the used motor oils with bromelain. The idea is to breakdown the used motor oils into the basics of carbon dioxide and water. However, I need to find out more on the actual by product of the reaction of bromelain on motor oils. Secondly I need to research the proportion of bromelain to the used oils. The problem in our country is much of the oils are drained into normal drains much of the time or simply discarded .My idea is to come up with a simple technology which is able to collect and return the oil to its basics and perhaps utilise the water and carbon dioxide for some good use.I am not talking about re refining oils. Could you assist me in this matter. Patents are out of my reach as I am only 16 years old and this is actually my science project which I would like to submit for a science carnival in my country. Thanks a lot and I do hope you would be able to assist me.

Hi Nathanael,

The project you propose is covered in project J0813 in http://www.usc.edu/CSSF/History/2006/Projects/J08.pdf

You may may want to look at extensions to the existing project, such as comparison between different chemicals besides bromelain, different chemicals used in combination with bromelain, or different concentrations of bromelain.

Thanks for the information on Bromelain as we are planning to extract bromelain from pineapples for medicinal purposes. We are doing last year of our medical course and looking forward to our projects. We have decided to extract bromelain from pineapples and do some research using this and do a thesis on these experiments with Meaningful Use Attestation