Abstract
Pearl powder is a famous traditional Chinese medicine that has a long history in treating palpitations, insomnia, convulsions, epilepsy, ulcers, and skin lightining. Recently, several studies have demonstrated the effects of pearl extracts on protection of ultraviolet A (UVA) induced irritation on human skin fibroblasts and inhibition of melanin genesis on B16F10 mouse melanoma cells. To further explore the effect we focused on the whitening efficacy of pearl hydrolyzed conchiolin protein (HCP) on human melanoma MNT-1 cells under the irritation of alpha-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (α-MSH) or endothelin 1 (ET-1) to evaluate the intracellular tyrosinase and melanin contents, as well as the expression levels of tyrosinase (TYR), tyrosinase related protein 1 (TRP-1), and dopachrome tautomerase (DCT) genes and related proteins. We found that HCP could decrease the intracellular melanin content by reducing the activity of intracellular tyrosinase and inhibiting the expression of TYR, TRP-1, DCT genes and proteins. At the same time, the effect of HCP on melanosome transfer effect was also investigated in the co-culture system of immortalized human keratinocyte HaCaT cells with MNT-1. The result indicated that HCP could promote the transfer of melanosomes in MNT-1 melanocytes to HaCaT cells, which might accelerate the skin whitening process by quickly transferring and metabolizing melanosomes during keratinocyte differentiation. Further study is needed to explore the mechanism of melanosome transfer with depigmentation.