Compass: Touching Us All

By: Rachel Chapman, Cosmetics & Toiletries

Posted: December 28, 2006, from the January 2007 issue of Cosmetics & Toiletries.

Enough cannot be said about the skin. It is something that we all have in common, and that literally touches us on an everyday basis.

Yet, there are still many mysteries to solve about the skin, which is why so much time and so many research dollars are dedicated to its study. At the International Federation of the Societies of Cosmetic Chemists meeting held recently in Japan, nearly two-thirds of the conference sessions featured research related to skin.

In the personal care industry, skin care usually tops the list for product sales.* As the behavior of skin and its underlying mechanisms become clearer, innovations continue to emerge to trigger antiaging responses, or beef up the skin’s vital protective functions. In this issue, authors Schmid and Zülli study what makes the skin age in, “Mutations in Mitochondrial DNA as Principal Aging Factor,” beginning, while Plantivaux et al. investigate the effect of the (Cys-Gly)2 dimer peptide against UV-induced oxidative stress on the skin.

Perfluoropolyether phosphate is investigated by Pantini et al. as a material to renew skin while maintaining an acceptable safety profile, and Rieger looks at current dermatological research on photo-aging and skin repair in his review article. Relating to photo-aging of the skin, this issue also features our annual Sun Care Formulary beginning.

Finally, one of the more recent innovations for the cleansing of, and delivery to, the skin is wipes. Meyer et al. discuss a new technology to produce o/w phase inversion concentration (PIC) emulsions with a very fine particle size, useful for impregnating lotions for cosmetic wet wipes.