Skin-whitening agent
AssigneeMegmilk Snow Brand Co., Ltd.
InventorsTatsuya Watanabe, Ken Kato, Hiroshi Ueno, Yuko Haruta, Noriko Ueda, Toshimitsu Yoshioka
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A skin-whitening agent offering an excellent whitening effect and being effective in preventing and treating age spots, freckles, etc., where such skin-whitening agent contains as its effective ingredient a whey protein hydrolyzate characterized by a molecular weight distribution of 10 kDa or less, main peak of 200 Da to 3 kDa, APL (average peptide-chain length) of 2 to 8, free amino acid content of 20% or less, and antigenicity of one-ten thousandth of β-lactoglobulin or less, as well as a cosmetic, drink or food, feed, pharmaceutical preparation or other skin-whitening product containing such skin-whitening agent.
Claims2
A method for skin-whitening, comprising:
- providing a whey protein hydrolyzate having the following characteristics:
- (A) the molecular weight is distributed within 10 kDa with a main peak of 200 Da to 500 Da;
- (B) the APL (average peptide-chain length) is 2 to 8;
- (C) the free amino acid content is 20% or less;
- and
- (D) the antigenicity is one-ten thousandth of antigenicity of β-lactoglobulin or less;
- and
- orally administrating the whey protein hydrolyzate as a skin-whitening agent to a subject desiring skin-whitening, in an amount of at least 5 mg of the whey protein hydrolyzate per day,
- wherein the step of providing the whey protein hydrolyzate comprises:
- (i) enzymatically decomposing a whey protein as a preliminary decomposition using a protein hydrolyzing enzyme under pH 6 to 10 at 20 to 55° C., and then raising the temperature for further decomposition of the whey protein in step (ii);
- and
- (ii) enzymatically decomposing the hydrolyzed whey protein obtained in step (i) while thermally denaturing the hydrolyzed whey protein using a heat-resistant protein hydrolyzing enzyme under pH 6 to 10 at 50 to 70° C. until a main peak of the hydrolyzed whey protein is reduced to 200 Da to 500 Da as measured when concentrated using a molecular weight cut off in a range of 2 kDa to 10 kDa and in a range of 150 Da to 300 Da, and then heating the obtained product and thereby deactivating the enzyme.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.