Abstract
The last decades witnessed a great demand of natural remedies. As a result, medicinal plants have been increasingly cultivated on a commercial scale, but the yield, the productive quality and the safety have not always been satisfactory. Plant cell cultures provide useful alternatives for the production of active ingredients for biomedical and cosmetic uses, since they represent standardized, contaminant-free and biosustainable systems, which allow the production of desired compounds on an industrial scale. Moreover, thanks to their totipotency, plant cells grown as liquid suspension cultures can be used as “biofactories” for the production of commercially interesting secondary metabolites, which are in many cases synthesized in low amounts in plant tissues and differentially distributed in the plant organs, such as roots, leaves, flowers or fruits. Although it is very widespread in the pharmaceutical industry, plant cell culture technology is not yet very common in the cosmetic field. The aim of the present review is to focus on the successful research accomplishments in the development of plant cell cultures for the production of active ingredients for cosmetic applications.
Highlights
Plants are unique organisms able to create their own food through photosynthesis and provide oxygen to the atmosphere
The aim of the present review is to focus on the successful research accomplishments in the development of plant cell cultures for the production of active ingredients for cosmetic applications
Plant cell cultures certainly represent a valid alternative for the production of cosmetic active ingredients, since they always provide standardized, contaminant-free and biosustainable products, whose production can be extended to an industrial scale
Summary
Plants are unique organisms able to create their own food through photosynthesis and provide oxygen to the atmosphere. A certain amount of undifferentiated totipotent cells are always maintained in the meristems located in the tips of shoots and roots or inside the vascular system, allowing fast cell division under proper stimuli [2]. For this reason, even though scientifically correct, it is generally redundant to use the term “stem” when talking about plants, since the totipotency is an intrinsic feature of each differentiated plant tissue belonging to adult plants and to embryonic developmental stages
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