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

The research of the possible uses of this secretion goes back some 15 years. A Chilean enterprise 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 endure to when a predator threatens them, or when they emerge into an atmosphere saturated with oxygen radicals after hibernating. This enterprise has also created a biotechnology to ensure 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 researchers have analyzed snails and their secretions. The snails were treated as simple creatures, allowing research and the modeling of natural functions thought to be more intricate in vertebrates. The researchers have discovered molecules in the snail secretion now being considered worthwhile candidates for the creation of drugs, and natural skin care treatments.

Their findings have resulted in a new field in science named the "sweet science of glycobiology", a burgeoning branch that intends to understand how sugars in the body -called glycans- influence human health and contain information necessary to define the complexity of life as that of DNA and proteins. It also delivers the possible explanation of a more humble observation by layman people. The observation that manipulating snails while breeding them for their value as a gourmet delicacy, produced soft hands and scarless healing of small wounds, cuts and scrapes.

The Natural Way to Healthy Skin

Also, it could explain the further finding that snails injured by birds are able to repair 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, hold onto something when on a vertical position defying gravity, to seal themselves into their shell by the dry secretion 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 created to gather 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 gather the fluids by submerging snails in warm water and then filtering the mucin, for the use of the secretion 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 mechanically to promote the production of their fluid, 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 secretions of an African snail, as a drug to impede angiogenesis.