Abstract

Skin spots problem affects many people in the world. Since most of the skin care products commercially available contain toxic lightening agents with a toxicological profile, there is a growing need to study new safe lightening ingredients (1, 2). Kalichem Italia srl has recently developed a new and effective skin brightnening ingredient composed by natural raw materials with acknowledged lightening activity, produced with a new technology enhancing the active principles’ effect. The result is an innovative and safe cosmetic ingredient with brightening effect on the skin, ideal for the prevention and treatment of skin spots and for achieving a more homogenous skin color. It may be used in de-pigmenting products for the treatment of skin discoloration and in face care lightening products.

INTRODUCTION
Hyper pigmentation and skin spots are problems that affect many people in different regions of the world. In addition, many hyperpigmentary skin disorders such as melasma, post inflammatory hyper pigmentation and senile freckles can be exacerbated by sun exposure. One effective way to maintain a light and uniform skin color is to avoid sun exposure by using sunscreens or by wearing protective clothing (3). It has been proposed that a regular use of sun protection products may lead to skin lightening, as the primary stimulus for melanin synthesis is excluded and the pigment present in the epidermis is lost through stratum corneum desquamation (1). The melanin biosynthetic pathway has firstly been elucidated by Raper (4), Mason (5) and subsequently revised by other authors such as Schallreuter et al. (6) (Figure 1). Melanogenesis starts with tyrosine oxidation to Dopaquinone, a reaction catalyzed by Tyrosinase enzyme. This is the rate limiting step in melanin synthesis (7, 8) because the remaining part of the reaction sequence can proceed spontaneously at physiological pH value (9). The resulting Dopaquinone is converted to Dopa ...