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

The research of the potential uses of this secretion goes back some 15 years. A Chilean company has conducted research and created a biotechnology to gather the secretion. They do this by submitting the snails to controlled stress similar to what they have to respond to when a predator threatens them, or when they come into an atmosphere full of oxygen radicals after hibernating. This company has also created a biotechnology to ensure the bio-availability of the secretion deep within the skin where it interacts with target cells to repair skin damage.

Natural Skin Treatment with Biological Ingredients

For many years, numerous scientists have studied snails and their secretions. The snails were considered simple creatures, allowing study and the modeling of biological functions thought to be more intricate in vertebrates. The scientists have discovered 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 frontier in science named the "sweet science of glycobiology", a burgeoning branch that attempts to explain how sugars in the body -called glycans- contribute to human health and contain information needed to determine the complexity of life as that of DNA and proteins. It also sheds light onto 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 finding that snails wounded by birds are able to repair some of their parts -eyes and mouth- by bubbling onto themselves what seems to be the same fluid mentioned above. The snails also use it to crawl more easily, stick onto something while on a vertical position defying gravity, to seal themselves into their shell by the dry fluid on the opercula, or to persuade bugs 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 procedure designed to collect the fluid and its use in cosmetic or skin care products have been authorized. One to a Chilean doctor, in Chile in 1995, for a procedure to collect the secretions by agitating 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 procedure whereby snails are stressed physically 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 conferred in the US in 2000 for the use of an intricate glyco-molecule, taken from the body and also present in the secretions of an African snail, as a drug to impede angiogenesis.