Recombinant collagen guide —— From type Ⅰ to type Ⅲ, from animal-derived to recombinant humanized

Type Ⅰ collagen vs Type Ⅲ collagen 

The loss of skin collagen is one of the main causes of skin aging. The collagen in the dermis is mainly composed of type Ⅰ collagen  and type Ⅲ collagen, which are responsible for the tensile strength and stability of the dermis tissue and blood vessels.

Recombinant humanized type Ⅰ collagen 

Type I collagen is a thick, tightly packed bundle structure with a molecular length of 300nm and a width of 1.5nm. It is mainly used to maintain skin tension and withstand tensile force, providing a strong supporting structure and support for the skin. The loss of type I collagen will cause facial wrinkles and depressions. 

Recombinant humanized type Ⅲ collagen 

Type III collagen is one of the fibrous collagens, accounting for about 5%-20% of the total collagen content in the human body. Type III collagen is mainly distributed around type I collagen at the junction of the epidermis and dermis, and is in the form of a loose mesh and is relatively small. Due to its low tension and instability, it mainly provides elasticity and stress resistance for the skin. Type III collagen has a good nutritional recovery and repair and healing effect. In addition, type III collagen can regulate the synthesis of type I collagen, accelerate the formation of collagen fibrils, and regulate the structure and functional characteristics of fibrils. 

The human body cannot produce type Ⅲ collagen automatically or passively, and the lost type Ⅲ collagen can only be replenished through direct irrigation in the dermis. 

Animal-derived collagen VS. recombinant humanized collagen 

Collagen has a wide range of applications, and the traditional collagen production method is far from meeting the demand. At present, the mainstream collagen on the market is animal collagen extracted from pig skin, fish skin, cow skin, donkey skin, fish scales, etc. Its gene sequence is fundamentally different from human collagen and is a non-homologous substance. During the extraction process, the structure and activity of animal collagen may be destroyed, and the final extracted product is mainly presented in the form of collagen short peptides, which cannot perform its biological function. At the same time, after entering the human body, animal collagen is blocked by the skin immune layer and cannot penetrate into the muscle base and dermis. In addition, there are many disadvantages during use, such as low or even no activity, animal virus contamination, and allergy risks.  

With the development and progress of synthetic biology, collagen has made breakthroughs in genetic recombination technology, and recombinant collagen has come into being, becoming a new type of collagen material with better quality and more application development prospects. Compared with traditional animal-derived collagen, the sequence of recombinant collagen is highly consistent with the human gene sequence, has good tissue compatibility, can be directly absorbed by the human body and participate in the construction of collagen. It has excellent tissue compatibility and skin affinity, and avoids disease risks such as xenogeneic purification of animal-derived collagen. 

Studies have shown that humanized type III collagen has the advantages of good water solubility, no virus risk, low rejection rate, and stable production process. The application of type III recombinant humanized collagen is significantly safer and more effective than animal-derived collagen: type III recombinant humanized collagen has a high protein activity area, not only has a collagen triple helix structure, but also multiple groups of hydrogen bond networks can further stabilize the three polypeptide chains, increasing the stability of the triple helix structure; type III recombinant humanized collagen is a homologous substance to human collagen, has good tissue compatibility, has normal physiological activity, and is better absorbed, assimilated and utilized by the human body. 

Yingrun Biotech is committed to becoming a leader in the beauty and health for mankind. 

References:

 [1] Yan Lei1, Du Juan1, Yu Fan1, et al. Operational specifications of recombinant humanized type III collagen water light injection technology[J]. Chinese Medical Cosmetology, 2023, Vol. 13(3):56-60. 

[2] Qiao Shaojun, Yang Xia, He Zhenrui, et al. Application research of type III recombinant humanized collagen in biomedical engineering[J]. Commodity and Quality, 2020, (9):73，92. 

[3] Zhang Ziqian, Yang Rongli, Zhang Lan, et al. Observation on the efficacy of hydroxychloroquine combined with topical recombinant bovine basic fibroblast growth factor and recombinant human type III collagen in the treatment of rosacea[J]. Chinese Journal of Integrated Traditional and Western Medicine Dermatology and Venereology, 2020, 19(2):163-165. 

[4] Song Ruonan, Ma Hongwei, Luan Xiaoyi, et al. Preparation of recombinant human type III collagen cream and its pharmacodynamic evaluation on wound healing[J]. Pharmaceutical Biotechnology, 2022, 29(2): 121-126.

[5] You S, Liu S, Dong X, et al. Intravaginal Administration of Human Type III Collagen-Derived Biomaterial with High Cell-Adhesion Activity to Treat Vaginal Atrophy in Rats[J]. ACS Biomater Sci Eng, 2020, 6(4): 1977-1988.