Laccase Mediator Cocktail System as a Sustainable Skin Whitening Agent for Deep Eumelanin Decolorization |
| |
Authors: | Valeria Gigli Davide Piccinino Daniele Avitabile Riccarda Antiochia Eliana Capecchi Raffaele Saladino |
| |
Affiliation: | 1.Department of Experimental Medicine, Sapienza University of Rome, Viale Regina Elena 324, 00166 Rome, Italy;2.Department of Biological and Ecological Sciences, University of Tuscia, 01100 Viterbo, Italy;3.IDI Farmaceutici, Pomezia, 00071 Rome, Italy;4.Department of Chemistry and Drug Technologies, Sapienza University of Rome, P.le Aldo Moro 5, 00185 Rome, Italy; |
| |
Abstract: | The overproduction of eumelanin leads to a panel of unaesthetic hyper-pigmented skin diseases, including melasma and age spots. The treatment of these diseases often requires the use of tyrosinase inhibitors, which act as skin whitening agents by inhibiting the synthesis of eumelanin, with harmful side effects. We report here that laccase from Trametes versicolor in association with a cocktail of natural phenol redox mediators efficiently degraded eumelanin from Sepia officinalis, offering an alternative procedure to traditional whitening agents. Redox mediators showed a synergistic effect with respect to their single-mediator counterpart, highlighting the beneficial role of the cocktail system. The pro-oxidant DHICA sub-units of eumelanin were degraded better than the DHI counterpart, as monitored by the formation of pyrrole-2,3,5-tricarboxylic acid (PTCA) and pyrrole-2,3-dicarboxylic acid (PDCA) degradation products. The most effective laccase-mediated cocktail system was successively applied in a two-component prototype of a topical whitening cream, showing high degradative efficacy against eumelanin. |
| |
Keywords: | laccase mediator cocktail system skin whitening agents eumelanin decolorization |
|
|