New Zealand scientists say they are close to verifying the immune-boosting properties of deer velvet that have been recognized for centuries in traditional Asian medicine.

If their research was successful, it would allow velvet extracts to be sold with a precise measure of the active ingredients they contained, and potentially send the export market soaring, according to Deer Industry New Zealand (DINZ) experts.

AgResearch institute scientist Dr Stephen Haines said their research, which began in the 1990s, had shown that velvet extracts boosted immune function both in cell-lines and in animals.

"But we didn't know what was doing it. Velvet is a very complex mixture of thousands of components, making it very difficult to isolate and identify the ones that are biologically active," Haines said in a statement Monday.

However, recent improvements in mass spectrometry and high- speed data processing had made it possible for researchers to sort through the thousands of peptides, proteins and related compounds in velvet to find the ones with bioactive properties.

The research was being carried out with support from the Korean Ginseng Corporation (KGC), a South Korean firm that had become the largest buyer of New Zealand deer antler velvet.

Four different velvet extracts provided by KGC had been shown in in-vitro studies to boost immune function to varying degrees, with the most active extract consistently stimulating high levels of activity in the natural killer cells that fight infection before the immune system starts producing antibodies.

"We are now testing them on two different types of human cell to assess their immune boosting function. If we identify the active ingredients, that would support the development of a standardized product for immune function," Haines said.

"This would be an important step in getting velvet products registered as healthy functional foods in China or Korea (Korean Peninsula)-- something that would add considerable value to New Zealand velvet. The sky could be the limit."

The DINZ group said the research would be an important step in getting regulators to register velvet products as healthy functional foods.

"Velvet's reputation as a health tonic goes back more than 1, 000 years and it is still widely used in Korean Peninsula and China in mixtures with ginseng and herbs in tonics and traditional medicines," DINZ chief executive Dan Coup said in the statement.