The Foreskin Industry

The Foreskin Industry

Infant foreskins seem to be a multi-million-dollar industry since neonatal fibroblasts / stem cells gained from the foreskin (prepuce) can be used for:  breathable bandages, treatment of bedsores, hair-grow stimulants, anti-aging cosmetic face creams, and injectable collagen. Foreskin derived stem cells could be used to treat congenital muscular dystrophy.



A patent search finds thousands of patent applications (most are not granted) dealing with all sorts of ‘prepuce-related things’, like: prepuce stretching, cutting, prosthesis, restoration, cleaning, stripping, measuring, stitching, surgical treatment of juvenile phimosis, but also the use of human foreskin cells suitable for culturing stem cells.


Patent applications may use text snippets like (just look at the catch words):

·       The present invention is generally related to skin care compositions, and more specifically to cosmeceuticals and medicaments for topical application, including a skin cream, comprising exosome enriched cell culture medium conditioned by foreskin-derived fibroblast cells grown in two-dimensional culture.

·       In preferred embodiments of the present invention, monolayer cultures of primary human foreskin fibroblasts are used to …

·       In a preferred embodiment of the organotypic artificial skin of the present invention, the fibroblast is an in vitro culture isolated from the following cells: fibroblasts of mammalian skin, preferably human fibroblasts, including isolated primary infants skin fibroblasts, adult dermal fibroblasts, and juvenile foreskin fibroblasts, most preferably in vitro cultures of juvenile foreskin fibroblasts.

·       Other means of obtaining the initial keratinocytes may also be employed. For instance, keratinocytes may be isolated from neonatal foreskin retrieved from circumcision using the techniques detailed in …

·       An injection for treating skin defects, the injection mainly consists of cellular components, and the content of the cellular components per milliliter of the injection is 10-50 million; the cellular components are the skin of an aborted fetal skin or a foreskin removed by a newborn At least one of dermal fibroblast stem cells, fibroblast precursor cells, and fibroblasts collected after low-serum or serum-free culture and expansion.

·       The skin substitute of any of claims 2, 12, or 20, wherein the keratinocytes are neonatal foreskin keratinocytes, adult keratinocytes, or keratinocyte-like cells derived from pluripotential stem cells or from epithelial cells.

·       The engineered fibroblast cell of claim 9, wherein the mammalian tissues are derived from a placenta, umbilical cord, foreskin, skin, omentum, adipose tissue, and/or bone marrow.

·       A composition according to claim 9, wherein the epidermal cells originate in human foreskin.

·       The encapsulated material of claim 11, wherein the biological material is selected from pancreatic islet cells, human foreskin fibroblasts

·       The present invention relates to human foreskin cells, which are capable of maintaining stem cells in an undifferentiated state in culture 


In other words, the prepuce seems to be a very powerful and valuable part of the body, only the circumcised don’t profit from this ‘beneficial income’.

The next blog will cover some aspects of evolution and history.

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