Insights into Health-Promoting Components in Cheese beyond Bioactive Peptides

Despite cheeses being the most consumed dairy products in the world, only some of them have been fully characterized. Overall, it has been documented that upon the fermentation and/or aging process of cheese, different health-promoting components are formed, with bioactive peptides with antioxidant, antihypertensive, antimicrobial, opioid, anticarcinogenic, and zinc-binding properties being the most reported. However, in addition to these key food components, other bioactive compounds such as exopolysaccharides, vitamins, amino acids, gamma-aminobutyric acid, and polyunsaturated fatty acids have also been described, which may provide additional health properties. In this sense, the use of bioinformatics tools has allowed the virtual screening of such compounds as possible therapeutic candidates prior to in vitro and in vivo experiments. Hence, this document aimed to present an overview on promising health-promoting compounds in cheese beyond bioactive peptides, as well as the bioinformatic approaches used in their identification and prediction of their target and signaling pathways.