Research in Cosmetic Valley

By: Eric Perrier, LVMH, et al.

Posted: February 19, 2010

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More recently, a solvent-free microwave extraction (SFME) technique has been developed for the extraction of essential oils from fresh or re-moistened spices or aromatic plants. Its principle is based on the heating of water present inside the plant material by microwave irradiation. Hence, SFME provides a new aspect of green extraction development for natural compounds without any solvent.

How are these advances employed for personal care R&D?
The search of active ingredients from natural sources for the cosmetics industry requires rapid and high performance techniques for both analysis and fractionation. This involves working with the bio-guided fractionation of plant extracts and methods for isolation and identification of lead candidates using centrifugal partition chromatography (CPC), coupled or not to mass spectrometry.

CPC is based on partition of a solute between two immiscible solvents (mobile and stationary phases). CPC affords several advantages in comparison with preparative chromatography—i.e., CPC does not require a solid support as a stationary phase, and thus there is no degradation of solutes on the support. In addition, a high polarity range of solutes in a plant material is not a problem since a given solvent pair can be used under normal phase or reversed phase chromatographic conditions. The total recovery of compounds is assured at the end of each experiment.

A Manufacturer’s Case Study, by Daniel Guillermin, Shiseido:

What project did your company present to the Cosmetic Valley? How did members of the group collaborate on your project?
The objective of Shiseido International France Packaging was to develop new inner decoration coatings for fragrance bottles. The different partners selected by Shiseido worked together on a specific research program to invent and develop a fragrance-resistant inner coating with a repeatable and competitive industrial target process.