The production process and technology of hyaluronic acid determine the difference in quality, so products produced from the correct source must have therapeutic effects when used. Generally speaking, there are three methods for refining:
1. Animal tissue: The main raw materials are cockscomb and bovine vitreous humor. Defatting and dehydrating the raw materials with acetone or ethanol, soaking and filtering them in distilled water, and then treating them with sodium chloride solution and chloroform solution. After adding trypsin for insulation, a mixture is obtained. Finally, the mixture is treated and purified with an ion exchanger to obtain refined hyaluronic acid. This method has an extremely low extraction rate of only about 1%, and the separation process is complex, resulting in the expensive price of hyaluronic acid, reaching $5000/kg, which limits its large-scale use in cosmetics.
2. Microbial fermentation: Fermentation broth using glucose as a carbon source. After 48 hours of fermentation in the culture medium, the mycelium and impurities are removed by filtration, and then high-purity products are obtained through simple operations such as alcohol precipitation. The advantage of using fermentation method to produce hyaluronic acid is that its molecular weight can be set according to the product design. The key to fermentation method lies in the selection of bacterial strains, such as streptococcus and lactobacilli.
3. Chemical synthesis: using natural enzyme polymerization reaction; Firstly, a polysaccharide polymer is used to synthesize "hyaluronic acid oxazepentene derivatives". Then, a water splitting enzyme is added to create a complex of the derivative and enzyme. Finally, the enzyme is removed from the reaction solution at 90 degrees Celsius to synthesize hyaluronic acid. The use of artificial synthesis can greatly reduce the manufacturing cost of hyaluronic acid, but the structure is less refined.
The same hyaluronic acid product has a significant impact on its effectiveness due to differences in raw material sources and manufacturing techniques. The concentration of the product cannot be used as a reference for product selection, as purity, molecular weight, and 3D structure directly affect the water absorption effect of hyaluronic acid. Usually, the larger the molecular weight and the more complete the network structure, the better the water absorption effect. Skin care products and cosmetics are popular in the market, but many manufacturers make their own hyaluronic acid, which is cheap but not necessarily effective. Even the oral hyaluronic acid promoted by some people is broken down into small unit molecules of carbohydrates and amino acids after being absorbed by the gastrointestinal tract. It still needs to undergo self synthesis and other steps to be generated in the skin and connective tissue, and its effectiveness must be compromised.