【Pitera™ of SK-II Facial Treatment Essence owned by Procter & Gamble (P&G)】

SK-II skincare products are truly a luxury. The patent for SK-II’s proprietary Galactomyces ferment filtrate, famously known as Pitera™, had expired after the use of said proprietary ingredient was exclusive to this skincare range for almost two decades. The story of Pitera™ begins with a chance observation at a sake brewery in Japan, where a group of scientists noticed the elderly brewers had wrinkled faces but extraordinarily soft and youthful-looking hands. Intensive search began out of millions of yeast strains and studies were conducted on hundreds of fermentation conditions. Now every drop of Pitera™ is produced by cultivating an exclusive yeast strain under the most stringent conditions that remain SK-II’s most valuable trade secret to this day.

Source:
https://japantoday.com/
https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2008076416A1/en