Antimicrobial Peptides For Acne Breakouts Control

People from all countries have been using, for thousands of years, extracts from vegetables, frog skin, snail skin and mucus to accelerate healing of cutaneous injuries, burns and infectious diseases. Recent Western medical science has started to discover the magic of these traditional methods of cure. Discoveries of naturally active peptides and glycoproteins in snail tissues and mucins (Kubota Y et al., 1985) in frog skin (Zasloff, 1987) and in plants (Broekaert et al., 1995) reveal the beneficial effects of these treatments. Those bioactive peptides have been named antimicrobial peptides because their extreme effectiveness against a wide range of microbes.
Such natural magic is also part of our innate skin defensive system. Mammals are born with antimicrobial peptides deployed as a crucial defense against microbial invasion (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 functions as a physical barrier and has an active immunological role in the identification of microbes as well as in the production of cytokines and defensive molecules like antimicrobial peptides.
Anitmicrobial Peptides discovered in Natural Ingredient
The number of reports demonstrating the existence and up regulation of antimicrobial peptides in human skin is increasing and reflects the importance 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 recreating its bioactive components (by biosynthesis) in the laboratory.
That is a promising new venue for research and creating efficient drugs that offer a solution to acne scars removal, but bringing a drug to clinical tests is time consuming and expensive. It is estimated that it takes 0 million to bring a drug to the market. This cost covers everything from discovery, identification, synthesis and clinical trials. This process may also take ten or many more years to accomplish.
Luckily chance and keen observation of the benefits of the snail secretions on the wounded hands of people who manipulated snails as they bred them for food (in Chile) and further use of the same secretions on hundreds of acne and rosacea sufferers and people who have had acne scarring. This discovery has allowed to persevere in making the mucin available biologically in the shape of a topical cream for acne treatments.