Antimicrobial Peptides For Acne Breakouts Control

People from all countries have been using, for thousands of years, extracts from plants, toad skin, snail tissues and mucus to promote healing of skin injuries, burns and infectious diseases. Recent Western medical research has started to discover the magic of these traditional methods of cure. Researches of naturally active peptides and glycoproteins in snail tissues and secretions (Kubota Y et al., 1985) in toad skin (Zasloff, 1987) and in plants (Broekaert et al., 1995) reveal the beneficial effects of these treatments. Those bioactive peptides are extremely effective against a range of microbes and are thus named antimicrobial peptides.

Such magic of Nature is also part of our own skin defensive system. Mammals are born with antimicrobial peptides deployed as an important protection against microbial infection (Gallo and Nizet, 2003). The skin is a protective interface between internal organs and the external environment. Everyday, skin deals with toxins, physical stress, and the menace of thousands of potential pathogens. In order to face these challenges, skin acts as a physical defense and has an important immunological role in the identification of microbes as well as in the synthesis of cytokines and defensive molecules such as antimicrobial peptides.

Anitmicrobial Peptides discovered in Natural Ingredient

The number of reports demonstrating the existence and up regulation of antimicrobial peptides in human tissues is increasing and reflects the significance of these peptides in skin protection and treatment of acne scarring.

The fact that the snail mucus contains glycoproteins and peptides that kill bacteria and naturally induce the expression of endogenous antimicrobial peptides has been known since 1985. Scientists have focused on replicating its bioactive molecules (by biosynthesis) in the laboratory.

That is a blossoming new venue for research and creating effective drugs that offer a solution to acne scars removal, but bringing a drug to clinical trial is time consuming and expensive. It is estimated that it takes $300 million to bring a drug to the market. This cost includes everything from finding, identification, synthesis and clinical tests. This process may also take ten or many more years to accomplish.

Fortunately chance and keen observation of the effects of the snail mucin on the wounded hands of people who manipulated snails as they bred them for food (in Chile) and further use of the same mucin on hundreds of acne and rosacea patients and people who have had acne scarring. This discovery has allowed to persevere in making the mucin available naturally in the form of a topical cream for acne treatments.