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Protective Activity of Silk Sericin against UV Radiation-Induced Skin Damage by Downregulating Oxidative Stress
Sericin is a family of major cocoon proteins specifically synthesized in the middle silk gland of the silkworm Bombyx mori. Application of UVB to HR-1 mice once daily for 7 days resulted in the formation of red skin lesions. The formation of these skin lesions by UVB light was significantly inhibited by topical application of sericin as compared to other treatments. This inhibition was characterized by decreased area and intensity of red color of the lesions in sericin-treated mice. This study demonstrated that topical application of sericin exerts a marked inhibitory effect on UVB-induced sunburn lesions and UVB-induced tumor promotion in the DMBA-initiated mouse skin. The results suggest that sericin could be a useful photopreventive agent against UVB-induced acute damage and tumor promotion. Ultraviolet radiation particularly UVB, besides being a potent DNA-damaging agent, induces effectively an acute inflammatory response in the skin subsequently leading to cellular. Silk sericin (SS), a hydrophilic protein polymer, is composed of 18 amino acids among which glutamic acid (5%), threonine (6%), glycine (14.20%), aspartic acid (15.74%), and serine (31.99%) are predominant. Sericin obtained from Philosamia ricini, Bombyx mori, and Antheraea assamensis could protect keratinocytes that had been irradiated by UV-A and UV-B, therefore it showed that sericin act as antioxidant (Kumar et al., 2018). Sericin was also shown to have the ability to absorb UV-B when tested using a UV-VIS spectrophotometer (Sukirno et al., 2021).
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