Helix Aspersa Muller is a snail that has endured extreme climatic conditions for more than 600 million years. This land gastropod or mollusk has an original defensive system in the form of a complex glycol-conjugate secretion which helps the animal rapidly repair any harm to its skin.

The investigation of the potential uses of this secretion goes back some 15 years. A Chilean enterprise has performed research and developed a biotechnology to collect the secretion. They do this by submitting the snails to controlled stress similar to what they have to respond to when a predator attacks them, or when they come into an atmosphere saturated with oxygen radicals after hibernating. This enterprise has also developed a biotechnology to secure the bio-availability of the secretion deep inside the skin where it interacts with target cells to repair skin damage.

Natural Skin Treatment with Biological Ingredients

For many years, numerous scientists have analyzed snails and their secretions. The snails were considered simple creatures, allowing study and the modeling of natural functions thought to be more complex in vertebrates. The scientists have found molecules in the snail secretion now being thought worthwhile candidates for the development of drugs, and natural skin care treatments.

Their discoveries have resulted in a new field in science named the "sweet science of glycobiology", a blossoming branch that attempts to explain how sugars in the body -called glycans- contribute to human health and contain information needed to define the complexity of life as that of DNA and proteins. It also delivers the possible explanation of a more humble finding by layman people. The finding that manipulating snails while breeding them for their value as a gourmet delicacy, produced soft hands and scar free healing of small injuries, cuts and scrapes.

The Natural Way to Healthy Skin

Also, it could explain the further realization that snails wounded by birds are able to repair some of their parts -eyes and mouth- by bubbling onto themselves what appears to be the same fluid mentioned above. The snails also use it to crawl more easily, hold onto something when on a vertical position defying gravity, to isolate themselves into their shell by the dry fluid on the opercula, or to persuade insects to stay away from them. This biological secretion is the one that has this fascinating, healing effect on human skin.

Two patents of invention for a process created to gather the fluid and its use in cosmetic or skin care solutions have been authorized. One to a Chilean doctor, in Chile in 1995, for a process to gather the fluids by submerging snails in warm water and then separating the mucin, for the use of the secretion in a skin care product made with petrochemical and other chemical components. The second to a Spanish oncologist, in the USA in 1996, for a process whereby snails are stressed mechanically to induce the secretion of their mucin, and the use of it for the therapeutic and cosmetic treatment of skin, specially for radiodermatitis. There is also a patent granted in the US in 2000 for the use of a complex glyco-molecule, isolated from the body and also present in the mucins of an African snail, as a drug to impede angiogenesis.