Pharmacological and physicochemical properties of collagen breakdown-products.

It has been found that the pharmacologically active, low molecular products obtained by digestion of telopeptides-deprived type I collagen with bacterial collagenase is a heterogenous mixture of at least 21 peptides of different molecular weight. They contain 3 to 15 amino acid residues. About 80% of them are tripeptides of the sequence Gly-Pro-X. The most abundant are two peptides: Gly-Pro-Hyp and Gly-Pro-Ala. The peptides injected into the lateral cerebral ventricle of the rat evoked some behavioral effects. They decreased the psychomotoric activity (evaluated with Lat's test) and increased the cataleptic action of haloperidol. On the other hand, they did not exert any effect on amphetamine-induced stereotypy and did not counteract the apomorphine-induced stereotypy.