Tier 3 — preclinical

Hydrolyzed Marine Collagen: Emerging Evidence of Benefits via the Oral Route – Review and Insights for Medical Aesthetics Practitioners

Emanuele Bartoletti, Maurizio Cavallini, Marco Ettore Attilio Klinger, Ting Song Lim, Vicenta Maria Llorca Pérez, Mauro Raichi
Clinical, Cosmetic and Investigational Dermatology 2025 18:3339-3356

Bibliography

PubMed
PMID 41393269
PubMed Central
PMC12701666
DOI
10.2147/CCID.S562518
Funding
The corporate sponsor, Astéria Pharma Srl (Milan, Italy), was the sole provider of funding, through support for the article's open-access processing charges. Biohack Blueprint assessment: the corresponding author (Dr. Mauro Raichi) is the medical director of a company that markets a widely used hydrolysed marine collagen nutritional supplement, and served as a clinical pharmacology consultant on the review. Other co-authors disclose research grants and consulting/lecturing fees from aesthetic medicine and filler manufacturers (see Competing Interests).
Competing interests
The authors declare they have no conflicts of interest; no author received funding or other benefits, and none but Dr. Mauro Raichi has paid or unpaid relationships with industry manufacturers, publishers, or other companies related to the review design and manuscript submission. Dr. Raichi is medical director of a company that markets a hydrolysed marine collagen nutritional supplement, but served solely as a clinical pharmacology consultant. Dr. Maurizio Cavallini received research grants and lecturing fees mainly from Allergan and Mastelli Srl. Prof. Emanuele Bartoletti, Dr. Ting Song Lim, Prof. Marco Ettore Attilio Klinger, and Dr. Mauro Raichi received fees over the past year and a half from producers of fillers and aesthetic medicine/plastic surgery products for R&D consulting, educational material and lecturing roles.

Study snapshot

DesignNarrative review of preclinical (in vitro and animal) studies and a small number of human randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled trials on hydrolysed marine collagen
ModelMixed — human RCT participants (chronologically aged and photoaged women, mid-2010s to 2020s trials) plus preclinical fibroblast, wound-healing and rodent/animal models summarised across the reviewed studies
SampleNot a pooled sample; reviews individual human RCTs (e.g. a 12-week collagen-peptide-plus-ornithine trial; a Korean RCT using sutchi catfish-derived collagen; a triple-blind RCT of Pangasius hypophthalmus-derived marine collagen; a 90-day double-blind trial of hydrolysed fish cartilage) alongside multiple preclinical studies
InterventionOral hydrolysed marine collagen (from various fish and other marine sources) across the reviewed human and preclinical studies, generally at doses of ≥1 g/day and up to 5 g/day where specified
DurationIndividual reviewed studies ranged from single-exposure preclinical assays up to a 14-day radiolabelled tissue-distribution study in rats, and 12 weeks for the featured human RCTs
EndpointsSkin hydration, elasticity, wrinkling and radiance (multiple human RCTs); Fibroblast viability, proliferation and migration (in vitro scratch assay); Wound closure and collagen neosynthesis (rat cesarean-section wound model); Dermal echogenicity and collagen morphology (reflectance confocal microscopy, high-resolution ultrasound); Systemic bioavailability and tissue distribution (radiolabelled collagen fragment studies in rats/dogs)

What the study showed, in plain terms

This 2025 review focuses specifically on hydrolysed marine collagen — collagen fragments purified from fish, jellyfish and other aquatic sources — and asks whether the growing preclinical and clinical literature supports its use for skin regeneration via the oral route.

The authors summarise preclinical evidence that marine collagen fragments activate skin fibroblasts, accelerate wound closure in animal models nearly as effectively as recombinant human epidermal growth factor in vitro, and are absorbed with notably higher systemic bioavailability than collagen from land animals, likely due to their amino acid composition. On the clinical side, several small placebo-controlled human trials from 2018–2023 found improvements in skin elasticity, hydration, wrinkling and dermal collagen density with marine collagen supplementation.

This paper is included in the Data Center primarily as a review and mechanistic reference for the marine-collagen-specific literature; readers should note the corresponding author's direct commercial tie to a marine collagen supplement brand, which is disclosed in the article and noted here as an editorial flag.

Key findings

  • In vitro scratch-assay studies found marine collagen peptides at 50 µg/mL accelerated fibroblast cell migration almost as effectively as 10 µg/mL of recombinant human epidermal growth factor (rhEGF) over 24 hours, in a dose-dependent manner from 6.25–50 µg/mL.
  • In a rat cesarean-section wound model, hydrolysed chum salmon skin collagen peptides increased collagen buildup in healing skin wounds at 7 and 21 days, with increased immunohistochemical expression of PECAM-1 (CD31), basic fibroblast growth factor (bFGF), and TGF-ß1.
  • Radiolabelled tracer studies found absorption of hydrolysed marine collagen fragments up to 1.5 times more efficient than collagen fragments from land mammals, attributed to higher glycine, serine and threonine content and lower proline/hydroxyproline content; radioactivity persisted in skin tissue for over two weeks post-ingestion.
  • A 2018 randomised, placebo-controlled trial of collagen peptides plus ornithine found a significant increase in skin elasticity and a significant decrease in facial pore count after 12 weeks.
  • A 2018 Korean double-blind, placebo-controlled trial of sutchi catfish-derived collagen hydrolysate (≥15% glycine tripeptide) found skin hydration improved 7.23-fold versus placebo by 6 weeks, sustained over subsequent weeks even at a low dose of 1,000 mg/day.
  • A 2023 double-blind, placebo-controlled 90-day trial of hydrolysed fish cartilage found significant reductions in facial wrinkles in the frontal (−14%), nasolabial (−31%) and periorbital (−26%) areas versus baseline, corroborated by increased dermal echogenicity and improved collagen morphology on reflectance confocal microscopy.
  • No clinically significant adverse events were reported across the reviewed human studies; safety profiles were comparable to placebo, with only occasional mild nausea reported.

What this study can and cannot tell us

  • The authors explicitly restricted their human-study inclusion to PubMed-indexed, high-impact-factor journals, meaning the review is not a full systematic review and may have excluded some methodologically sound but non-indexed or corporate-published studies (the authors state this was a deliberate trade-off to minimise promotional bias).
  • The pool of rigorously conducted human clinical trials on hydrolysed marine collagen specifically (as opposed to hydrolysed collagen generally) remains small — the authors note only about thirty such studies existed as of April 2025.
  • Direct commercial conflict of interest: the corresponding author is medical director of a company marketing a hydrolysed marine collagen supplement, and the review's open-access costs were funded by a related corporate sponsor.
  • Most reviewed human trials were short-term (up to 12 weeks); the authors state they are conducting a long-term study to address the current lack of long-term safety and durability data.
  • As the authors note, there are no head-to-head human comparison trials between marine-derived and land-mammal-derived collagen hydrolysates, so claims of relative clinical superiority for marine sources remain unproven despite favourable preclinical bioavailability data.

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Effects of Hydrolyzed Collagen Supplementation on Skin Aging: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
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Szu-Yu Pu et al. · Nutrients · 2023
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Exploring the Impact of Hydrolyzed Collagen Oral Supplementation on Skin Rejuvenation: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Dian Andriani Ratna Dewi et al. · Cureus · 2023

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Dr. Khaled Mahmoud, MBBChCritical Care Medicine, Longevity Science & Editorial Direction Dr. Amr Yasser, PhDCardiometabolic, Musculoskeletal, Gut & Bioavailability Dr. Abdulla Mostafa, PhDCellular Senescence, Neurological, Mitochondrial & Brain-Ageing Biology