Skin whitening natural agents

About

In our previous research studies, we found that specific classes of natural compounds in medicinal plants provide prominent impact on improving skin condition, and agent DR2 and derivatives are the prime examples, which we called "Youth Factor". Dendrobium species, particularly D. officinale and D. nobile, contain considerable amounts of these DR-type compounds. We had demonstrated that the use of DR2 significantly reduced the generation of oxidative radicals in inflammatory conditions, such as pancreatitis and pulmonary injury, in vivo and such usage was granted with a US patent in 2016. In addition to the anti-oxidative property, the agents have been recently suggested for hyperpigmentation therapy as they were found to significantly reduce melanin formation by inhibiting tyrosinase activity and the expression levels of tyrosinase-related proteins (TRP-1 and TRP-2) in melanocytes. As the key players of pigmentation in skin, tyrosinase is the major rate-limiting enzyme for regulating the production of melanin in the epidermis whereas TRP-1 and TRP-2 are melanogenic enzymes that control the proportion of carboxylated subunits in melanin biopolymers. In our cellular experiments, agent DR2 and derivatives notably suppressed the activity of tyrosinase, so as the levels of TRP-1 and TRP-2 in the cultured melanocytes. Our experiment results on elucidating the anti-melanogenic and anti-oxidative properties of agent DR2 and derivatives have been published in the European Journal of Medicinal Chemistry in early 2018.