Skin Whitening via a Dual Biological Pathway

The challenge for new skin lighteners is to demonstrate innovative pathways of melanin synthesis inhibition while ensuring skin tolerance. One way to meet this challenge is to decrease melanogenesis by decreasing tyrosinase activity in melanocytes as well as inhibiting melanosome maturation. Furthermore, developing a skin lightener with components known for their high skin tolerance assures safe long-term daily use. In the present study, this dual biological pathway approach produced a visible reduction in skin pigmentation, which is demonstrated in a clinical test on Asian skin types.

A skin lightener was developed incorporating pea extract and sucrose dilaurate as the active components. P. sativum (pea) extract is a recognized cosmetic ingredient with antiaging and moisturizing properties. Sucrose dilaurate is a sucrose fatty acid ester with a history of use in the food industry as an emulsifier. These actives were identified during a search for melanogenesis inhibitors whose mechanism of action was neither direct tyrosinase inhibition nor oxidation inhibition, which are the mechanisms of the main skin-lightening agents such as arbutin, kojic acid and vitamin C derivatives. Because the functionality of the compound depends on both pea extract and sucrose dilaurate, the term PEAS will be used throughout this article to refer to this skin-whitening compound. 

A series of tests evaluated both the efficacy of the two active ingredients and the efficacy of the PEAS compound containing them. These tests are described next and constitute the remainder of this article.

Download the complete article.