Characteristics and Applications of Bioactive Peptides in Skin Care

Bioactive peptides (BAP) showed excellent cosmetic activity than bio-materials such as caffeic acid (CA), gallic acid (GA), and nicotinic acid (NA). Caffeoyl tripeptide-1 (CT-1) is a BAP that is stabilized with Gly-His-Lys (GHK) tripeptide and CA by using Fmoc solid phase peptide synthesis. Digalloyl tetrapeptide-19 (DT-19) is stabilized by combining Lys-Glu-Cys-Gly with GA and nicotinoyl tripeptide-1 (NT-1) is synthesized by GHK and NA. According to experiments, CT-1 has an excellent anti-oxidant function even with a very small amount of 10 ppm CT-1. DT-19's tyrosinase inhibition activity has the better effect of about 28.57% in 0.01% and 33.33% in 0.005% of concentration and about 7.89% in 0.001% concentration than vitamin-C. In addition, NT-1 is safer than the NA. Almost BAPs like pal-KTTKS, acetyl hexapeptide, and copper tripeptide-1 have the anti-wrinkle effect while DT-19 and NT-1 are applicable for potential BAPs focused on the whitening effect. The three kinds of BAPs like CT-1, DT-19, and NT-1 consisting of amino acids are safe to the skin, and have more excellent stability than bio-materials which are found to be unstable and cause skin irritation. Due to the high biological activity of BAP in the field of skin care, its utilization will increase constantly.