It’s a worldwide first! We discover the role of age-accelerating proteins
In order to bring you skincare that work on your skin from the inside out, we have continued to pursue dermatological research at the cellular level.
Ever since we launched Domohorn Wrinkle, we have continued to study skin aging from our perspective as a pharmaceutical company. By researching skin not just at the surface or the inner layers, but at the cellular level, we have identified the causes of wrinkles and age spots, and come up with ways to combat them. We are researching the proteins that create youthful-looking skin, essential to our pursuit of further research breakthroughs.
These are the self-healing proteins – Heat Shock Proteins (HSP) that are only now becoming widely known. We were the first company in the skincare industry to start studying them.
Self-healing proteinsHSP are made up of three principal components essential for maintaining beautiful skin. These components protect the skin from damage, maintain firmness by raising the quality of the skin’s own collagen, and protect the skin against reactive oxygen. They also act on damaged cells, helping them recover. Having focused on this area, we pursued research for many years with a focus on working directly on the wrinkles and age spots that occur as skin ages.
By reviewing natural ingredients and researching technologies to enable our products to act directly on the dermis, we shed light on the mechanism that enables the power of self-healing proteins to be fully activated. Meanwhile, we hypothesized that, if there are proteins that enhance the skin’s self-healing capacity (what we call “the fundamental power of skin”), then proteins that do the opposite probably exist too. It turned out that we were absolutely right, and we eventually identified a culprit–the protein called “Angptl2”.
It’s a worldwide first!
Saishunkan discovers the age-accelerating protein that leads to proliferating wrinkles and age spots!
Angptl2 is a protein present in every human body. It increases with age, and excessive increases in Angptl2 are implicated in cancers and “lifestyle diseases” such as heart disease and type 2 diabetes. We had a hunch that Angptl2 is also involved in skin aging, so we started researching it in collaboration with Kumamoto University. This led us to achieve a worldwide first by discovering that an increase in Angptl2 causes thickening of the keratin layer, degradation of collagen, and an increase in reactive oxygen and melanin. These are the phenomena that lead to wrinkles and age spots.
Based on these findings, we named Angptl2 the “age-accelerating protein,” and went on to research it further.
If self-healing proteins are the “brakes” that slow down aging, the newly-discovered age-accelerating protein is the aging “accelerator.” We hypothesized that, by weakening the aging accelerator and strengthening the aging brakes, it might be possible to keep skin aging in check. Even if we were not able to stop the phenomenon of aging along with chronological age, we might be able to slow it. As the mechanism of aging gradually became clearer, we began to understand even more about natural ingredients and methods that prevent aging.
