PDRN has gone from an Italian wound-healing drug to four letters on a serum box in about a decade. A reader who meets it in a clinic price list and on a supermarket shelf is entitled to ask whether the two are the same thing. They share a name. They do not share an evidence base. This page sets out what PDRN is, where the research came from, and what was measured by each route. It does not recommend any product or procedure.
What PDRN is
PDRN stands for polydeoxyribonucleotide: short lengths of DNA. The version used in the clinical trials is extracted from the sperm (milt) of salmon trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) or chum salmon (Oncorhynchus keta) and purified to strip out the proteins and peptides that could provoke an immune reaction. A 2017 review by the University of Messina group, which ran the largest PDRN trials, puts its fragments at 50 to 1,500 kDa (Squadrito et al., Frontiers in Pharmacology, PMID 28491036).
PDRN is not a peptide. A peptide is a chain of amino acids; DNA is a chain of nucleotides. This site covers it because it is sold beside peptides, often inside products called peptide serums, and because readers ask. Our analysis of the Medicube PDRN Pink Peptide Serum shows how that plays out on one label, where the ingredient appears as Sodium DNA.
The name has also widened. A 2026 review of plant-derived material notes that ingredients sold as PDRN now come from plant callus, roots and cell cultures, and warns that this evidence "should not be construed as demonstrating clinical equivalence to conventional animal-derived PDRN" (Kim et al., J Funct Biomater, PMID 42506577). One serum described in a 2026 case series takes its PDRN from Lactobacillus sakei, a bacterium (PMID 42696342). A label that says PDRN does not say which kind.
Where it came from
PDRN began as a prescription product in Italy. The earliest records in PubMed, from 1989 and 1990, describe "placental polydeoxyribonucleotide" applied to the cervix after cauterisation (PMIDs 2757327, 2102064). Through the 2000s the Messina group tested fish-derived PDRN in wounds, and in 2014 published the trial that still anchors the field:
| Trial | Who | What was given | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Squadrito 2014 (PMID 24483158) | 216 people with diabetic foot ulcers | PDRN or placebo, injected into muscle and around the ulcer for 8 weeks | Complete healing 37.3% vs 18.9% (P = .0027); median 30 vs 49 days |
| Rubegni 2001 (PMID 11759182) | 26 adults with skin-graft donor sites | PDRN or placebo, injected for 10 days | Faster re-epithelialisation at day 7 (p < 0.008) |
| Kim 2023 (PMID 35713247) | 44 people after open thyroid surgery | Two PDRN injections on days 1 and 2, or no treatment | Lower scar redness and height at 3 months; overall scar score 1.62 vs 2.50, p = 0.059 |
Each of these is a wound, surgical or ulcer population, and each gave PDRN by injection. None measured wrinkles.
How it is said to work
The published mechanism has two parts. PDRN binds the adenosine A2A receptor, which in laboratory and animal work promotes new blood-vessel growth (through VEGF) and damps inflammation. It also supplies nucleotides and nucleosides that cells can recycle. The Messina review notes that the A2A effect "seems to be linked to DNA origin, molecular weight and manufacturing process" — a point that matters now that PDRN from plants and bacteria is on the market. Receptor work in a dish or a mouse is not evidence that a cream reaches those receptors in a person's face.
The evidence by route
On 24 September 2026 PubMed returned 100 records with polydeoxyribonucleotide or PDRN in the title or abstract together with a skin, wrinkle, scar, rejuvenation or ageing term. Adding the "randomized controlled trial" publication-type filter left 3: the graft-site pilot, the thyroid-scar trial and the acne-scar study, all three by injection. (The same filter returns 334 records for retinol and skin, so it is working. The diabetic-ulcer trial is not among the three because its abstract uses "ulcer" and "wound" rather than any of those skin terms.)
Injected. The injected literature is where the positive results are: the ulcer, graft and thyroid-scar trials above, plus a 17-person open-label acne-scar study in which PDRN alone lowered the scar score by 6.1 points and PDRN combined with botulinum toxin by 12.0 (Park 2025, PMID 40826297). That study was randomized but not blinded and had about six people per group.
Microneedled. Clinics often apply PDRN after microneedling or laser, which opens channels in the skin. That is neither an injection nor a cream on intact skin, and in the records we read it is almost always tested together with the procedure, so the procedure's own effect cannot be separated out.
Topical. The topical record is small and recent. The most substantial study we found is a 2026 split-face trial of an eye cream containing 0.1% of a medium-length PDRN against a 0.1% retinol eye cream in 31 Chinese women with sensitive skin, over 28 days (Ye et al., PLoS One, PMID 42430369). The PDRN side improved about twice as much on wrinkle and eye-bag measures. Two of its authors' affiliations are cosmetics-ingredient companies, the paper declares no conflicts, and there was no PDRN-free version of the same cream, so the trial shows the PDRN cream did better than a retinol cream, not what the PDRN contributed. We found no vehicle-controlled trial of topical PDRN on ageing skin.
The size problem
The rule of thumb in dermatology is that molecules much above 500 daltons struggle to cross intact skin. The PDRN described in the Messina review starts at 50,000 daltons (50 kDa), 100 times that line, and runs to 1,500,000, 3,000 times it. Manufacturers answer this in two ways: by cutting the DNA shorter (the "medium-length" fragment in the 2026 trial) or by delivering it after microneedling. Both are real engineering choices. Neither is the material the ulcer trials used, and the 500-dalton line is a rough guide rather than a law.
What US regulators have and have not approved
- No PDRN injectable is cleared or approved in the US. On 24 September 2026, FDA's 510(k) and premarket-approval databases returned no record for polynucleotide, polydeoxyribonucleotide, salmon DNA or Rejuran. The same search for the hyaluronic-acid filler Juvederm returned 129 approval records.
- The one approved polydeoxyribonucleotide is a liver drug. FDA's label for Defitelio (defibrotide sodium, NDA 208114, approved 30 March 2016) gives its chemical name as "polydeoxyribonucleotide, sodium salt". It treats hepatic veno-occlusive disease after stem-cell transplant, is made from pig intestine and has no skin use. The Messina review says defibrotide has a different molecular weight and DNA source and does not share PDRN's wound-healing effects.
- Topical PDRN is sold as a cosmetic ingredient. Cosmetics do not need FDA approval before sale. A few PDRN products do appear in FDA's drug-label database — one lists "Sodium DNA 0.2%" as its active ingredient. Under 21 CFR 207.77, a listing in that database "does not denote approval" of the drug.
Claimed on pack, measured in trials
| What packaging and clinic menus say | What the trials measured |
|---|---|
| "Skin regeneration", "repair" | Ulcer closure, graft-site healing, post-surgical scar height, all by injection |
| "Salmon DNA" | True of the trial material; not necessarily of a product that says PDRN, which may be plant- or bacteria-derived |
| "Collagen boosting" | Collagen and receptor markers in cell cultures, animal skin and donated human skin |
| "Visible results" from a serum | One 31-person split-face comparison with retinol, no vehicle arm |
The skin-booster category, including longer-chain polynucleotides, is covered on our polynucleotides page, which also sets out how the two terms differ. For peptide ingredients whose topical trials are larger, see what peptides do for skin and the evidence-ranked list on peptides for skin. Anyone weighing a PDRN injection is best served by a dermatologist who can say what is in the specific product and how it is regulated where they live.