REVIEW article
Front. Pharmacol.
Sec. Ethnopharmacology
Biological effects of human placental extracts - Variations in manufacturing methods and compositions
Provisionally accepted
- 1Corporate Planning Department, Melsmon Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Tokyo, Japan
- 2Department of Integrative Neuroscience, Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, Nagasaki University, Nagasaki, Japan
Select one of your emails
You have multiple emails registered with Frontiers:
Notify me on publication
Please enter your email address:
If you already have an account, please login
You don't have a Frontiers account ? You can register here
Placental extracts have been used in traditional medicine across many cultures for centuries. In Traditional Chinese Medicine and Japanese Kampo, placenta has been valued for its ability to reduce fatigue, promote recovery, and enhance vitality. This stems from the belief that the placenta possesses regenerative and life-sustaining properties. In the modern era, the therapeutic use of placenta began with Filatov's "tissue therapy" in the Soviet Union, leading to the development of various extraction techniques from both human and animal placentas. Today, a variety of placental extracts has been manufactured using placentas from humans and livestock. The placental extracts that are currently being manufactured have different compositions owing to differences in origin, placental part used, and manufacturing methods. Despite the differences in the contents of these placental extracts, it has been shown that they exert, to some degree, common biological activities, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and immunomodulatory functions. Therefore, placental extracts are used as pharmaceuticals to treat menopausal disorders, improve liver function, treat osteoarthritis, and promote wound healing. They are also used as dietary supplements to improve skin texture and for anti-aging purposes. Notably, the relationship between the biological effects of a placental extract and its contents has not been accurately and comprehensively understood. This review summarizes the biological effects and functions of various placental extracts that have been reported to date, including our recent findings, and provides an overview of the biological effects of some human placental extracts for which we were able to obtain the manufacturing method information.
Keywords: Biological effect, Human placental extracts, Laennec, Manufacturing methods, Melsmon, Placentrex
Received: 22 Sep 2025; Accepted: 27 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Alimu, Yamamoto and Nakahata. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Yikelamu Alimu
Yasukazu Nakahata
Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.