The high incidence and mortality and generally lack of effective treatment for cancer have spurred extensive research on chemoprevention.Natural substances present in functional foods have recently been the object of research since several of these substances are believed to have potential value as cancer chemoprevcntive or therapeutic agents.In 2001,we discovered the cancer preventive properties of a novel and unique 43-amino peptide from soy we named lunasin and demonstrated its effcacy in mammalian cells and in a skin cancer model in mice against chemical carcinogens and oncogenes.Since then,we have established the presence of lunasin and characterized it in barley,wheat,Solanum family,amaranth and rye,which interestingly are considered healthy crops.It is important to elucidate the molecular mechanism of action of lunasin to predict its chemopreventive efficacy against different cancers and design a more efficacious homologue.Lunasin possesses 8 asp acid residue (D) at its carboxyl end preceded by the cell adhesion motif RGD and a putative helical region with structural homology to chromatin binding proteins.