Beauty, Science-Deep
© PKM1/ISTOCKPHOTO.COMThe trendy look for this season’s cosmetics lab is high-tech instruments and tools. Researchers are using gene microarrays to understand what makes young skin taut and even-toned, and to find out why older epidermis sags, wrinkles, or develops spots. They can then hunt for molecules that activate those same genes in aging or sun-damaged skin. A number of skin-care lines, such as Olay products, already contain ingredients based on microarray work.
Another way makeup makers develop new products is to examine the metabolism of skin cells. A healthy cell, with active mitochondria, is a comely cell. Old cells with fewer or malfunctioning mitochondria look aged. Modern devices can infer metabolic rate based on oxygen consumption and the acidic by-products released by cell cultures into the media in which the cells are grown.
Cultured skin is crucial to in vitro studies of personal-care products. One of the best mimics for the human integument is, not surprisingly, made of human skin. Epidermal cells from elective surgery, dissociated and reconstituted, are common in cosmetics labs where scientists daub on new compounds and test the safety of different formulations.
In fact, these days, product safety testing often takes place in a dish. Rarely do the methods involve using animals, which has been out of vogue for decades, notes Michael Ingrassia, senior manager for skin biology and drug delivery at Dow Pharmaceutical Sciences in Petaluma, California, where he works on the CeraVe moisturizer line. In fact, the desire to limit animal experimentation has driven the development of many modern cosmetics testing methods.
One common goal among cosmetics researchers is to make skin appear fresh and young. Signs of aging vary depending on skin tone. Light-skinned consumers are looking to minimize wrinkles, the earliest sign of aging in people with low levels of melanin in the skin. Buyers with dark, melanin-filled skin frequently seek products to diminish the darkened spots that appear in their skin before wrinkles.
To develop creams and other anti-aging remedies, researchers working at personal-care product companies use many of the same tools as their counterparts in basic research and pharmaceutical sciences.
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