Monitoring of whitening agent for skin analysis using tyrosinase gold nanoparticle-based colorimetric assay

Arbutin is a potential depigmenting agent that reduces melanin production by inhibiting tyrosinase activity and predicts the risk of whitening of the skin. Despite wide acceptance in routine laboratory tests, the conventional methods for whitening agent analysis have been of limited use because of high cost and lower signal sensitivity. Gold nanoparticles have gained considerable interest in improving the sensitivity and signals for the detection of proteins. Inspiring from these strategies, we have designed a tyrosinase enzyme gold nanoparticles (tyrosinase-AuNPs) method for the evaluation of arbutin with improved signals. The developed assay has been tested for tyrosine spiked samples to derive the standard graph. And then the performance of the assay is validated by testing arbutin on inhibiting tyrosinase activity. A detection limit of 13.70 mu M with R-2 of 0.982 is confirmed. Compared with the conventional method, the proposed assay represented the improved sensitivity, and signals are enhanced by five times that can be easily visualized through the naked eyes. Moreover, our method is beneficial because of the low cost and avoiding the need for expensive instruments. We believe that this method for arbutin evaluation will provide a foundation for the screening of other whitening agents, paving the way for future advances in the field of cosmetics.