Patent Pick: Cosmetic Caviar Serves Up Anti-aging Benefits

Whether they embrace well aging or anti-aging, consumers have a bottom line: healthy-looking skin. This means searching land, sea and sky for new ingredients to repair and maintain skin. The present patent explores a natural source from the sea: fish egg extract.  

Excessive sun exposure leads to skin damage, DNA damage such as telomere shortening and decreased DNA repair, and potentially cancer. In addition, cells may be damaged due to natural aging, which decreases the activity of skin cells; especially fibroblasts, their secretion of collagen and production of elastin.

These targets were the focus of a patent issued to the Norwegian biotech company, Regenics AS.

Fish egg extracts for skin rejuvenation
European Patent EP2928449
Publication date: Aug. 22, 2018
Assignee: Regenics AS

This invention relates to a process for preparing compositions including fish egg cellular extracts. The extracts induce one or more effects in skin, including stimulating fibroblast migration, stimulating elastin production, reducing the expression of inflammatory factors and up-regulating specific genes.

More specifically, the extracts addressed in this patent include but are not limited to fish eggs, urchin eggs, frog eggs, adult stem cells, plant seeds and plant stem cells. Further, the extracts can include any or all components or combinations thereof from the fish egg cells. This includes concentrated preparations of the active components, e.g., RNA, DNA, microRNA, lipids, free amino acids, and all amino acid base structures including peptides and proteins, carbohydrates, minerals or combinations thereof. 

The reported extracts are said to improve the health and damage of skin cells as well as restore aged or damaged skin to a more youthful and healthy-looking appearance.

Patent accessed on Aug. 22, 2018.