Helix Aspersa Muller is a snail that has survived extreme environmental conditions for more than 600 million years. This land gastropod or mollusk has an original defensive mechanism in the form of a complex 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 performed research and developed 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 emerge into an atmosphere saturated with oxygen radicals after hibernating. This company has also developed a biotechnology to secure the bio-availability of the secretion deep inside the skin where it interacts with target cells to recover skin damage.

Natural Skin Treatment with Biological Ingredients

For many years, numerous scientists have analyzed snails and their secretions. The snails were treated as manageable 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 creation of drugs, and natural skin care treatments.

Their discoveries have resulted in a new frontier in science called the "sweet science of glycobiology", a burgeoning branch that intends to explain how sugars in the body -called glycans- influence human health and keep information necessary to define the complexity of life as that of DNA and proteins. It also delivers the potential explanation of a more humble finding by layman people. The finding that manipulating snails while breeding them for their value as a gourmet delicacy, yielded soft hands and scar free healing of minor 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 recover some of their parts -eyes and mouth- by bubbling onto themselves what appears to be the same secretion mentioned above. The snails also use it to crawl more easily, stick onto something when on a vertical position defying gravity, to isolate themselves into their shell by the dry secretion 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 procedure created to collect the secretion and its use in cosmetic or skin care solutions have been authorized. One to a Chilean doctor, in Chile in 1995, for a procedure to collect the fluids by submerging snails in warm water and then separating the mucin, for the use of the extract in a skin care cream 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 a complex glyco-molecule, isolated from the body and also present in the mucins of an African snail, as a solution to impede angiogenesis.