韩国Kolmar Korea PDRN功能性护肤原料销售额去年同比增长32倍，公司同步推进植物源PDRN、AI筛选抗皱成分及人源化胶原蛋白商业化

Kolmar Korea (161890.KS) is seeing sales of functional dermocosmetic ingredients climb as the dermocosmetics market emerges as a new growth engine for K-beauty. As at-home skincare becomes routine and products offering dermatology-grade performance reach the market one after another, development of the underlying raw materials is accelerating.
Sales of products featuring PDRN rose about 32-fold last year from a year earlier, Kolmar Korea said on the 29th. PDRN consists of DNA fragments extracted mainly from salmon reproductive cells. It activates skin cells that help produce collagen and elastin, improving skin elasticity. The ingredient became known through its use in "skin booster" dermatology procedures, and a range of creams and ampoules containing PDRN has since made it widely available to ordinary consumers.
On the back of that growth, Kolmar Korea has secured technology to extract PDRN from plants rather than animals and is applying it to product development. In tests by the company's researchers, PDRN derived from Houttuynia cordata improved skin cell regeneration by more than 15% when applied to the skin, roughly twice the effect of animal-derived PDRN. Expression of the elastin gene, which governs skin elasticity, rose 60%.
The company is also investing in next-generation cosmetic ingredients such as nobiletin and human-like collagen. Last year Kolmar Korea used artificial intelligence to identify nobiletin, a functional ingredient drawing attention as an alternative to retinol. Nobiletin is a flavonoid found in citrus peel that reduces wrinkles and improves skin elasticity, and it is seen as a next-generation ingredient that can address the limitations of retinol, which can irritate the skin. "We used AI to sift through hundreds of thousands of candidate substances to find one that helps improve the skin while causing relatively little irritation," the company said, adding that it filed a related patent application in October last year.
A "100% human-like collagen" being developed jointly with the Biofoundry Research Center at Sungkyunkwan University is set for commercialization in the first half of next year. Unlike conventional collagen extracted from the bones or skin of pigs, cattle and fish, human-like collagen is produced using microorganisms in a structure similar to human collagen. Genetic information for making human collagen is inserted into microorganisms, which then produce the collagen and are cultured in large volumes. The material is expected to be more compatible with the human body than animal-derived collagen and to carry less risk of side effects such as allergic reactions.
"Demand for human-like collagen is high, but domestic mass-production capacity is limited, so most of the raw material is imported," a Kolmar Korea official said. "By improving strain development and the production process, we plan to expand its use beyond cosmetics into health functional foods and medical applications."
South Korea's skincare market grew at an average annual rate of 2.1% from 2020 through last year, according to market research firm Euromonitor. Over the same period, the dermocosmetic skincare market expanded 15.7%, roughly seven times faster than the conventional skincare market. Its size more than doubled to 1.31 trillion won from 632.1 billion won in 2020, and its share of the total skincare market widened to 17% from 9%.