Patent Picks—Ellagic Acid, Marine Botanicals, Stem Cells, Cyclodextrin Acetals and More for Anti-aging

By: Katie Anderson (Schaefer), Cosmetics & Toiletries magazine

Posted: February 15, 2012

page 5 of 6

The disclosure is directed to apparatus and methods for testing relationships between gene expression and physical appearance of skin and methods of assessing the efficacy of skin anti-aging agents.

In a first aspect, the present disclosure is directed to a method of testing to identify genes associated with one or more physical attributes of skin aging. The methods comprise exposing a first sample of human skin cells or tissue to an agent, determining a first set of expression levels of a plurality of genes in the first sample of human skin, comparing the first set of expression levels to a second set of expression levels, the second set of expression levels corresponding to expression levels of human skin tissue not exposed to the agent, to identify a first subset of genes having a fold change difference in expression level between the exposed and unexposed samples that meets a first, selected biological relevance level, selecting from the first subset of genes a second subset of genes, each gene being associated with a biochemical pathway associated with physical appearance of skin aging, selecting from the second subset of genes, at least one skin attribute subset of genes, each gene in the skin attribute subset being associated with a biochemical pathway relating to the skin attribute that is shown in the comparing step to have been regulated in a more youthful direction for that biochemical pathway and skin attribute, exposing a second sample of human skin tissue to the agent, determining the levels of expression for the at least one skin attribute subset of genes in the second sample of human skin tissue using a method for determining expression levels that is different than that used for the first sample of human skin tissue, and selecting a third subset of genes from the at least one skin attribute subset of genes whose expression levels in the second sample of human skin tissue meet a second, selected biological relevance level and whose direction of regulation conforms to the more youthful direction used in selecting the at least one skin attribute subset of genes.

Elastase inhibitor
United States Patent Application 20120034260
Publication Date: Feb. 9, 2012
Assignee: Shiseido Company, Ltd.

This patent discusses an elastase inhibitor that contains the active ingredients raspberry extract, hydroxyproline and optionally yeast extract. An object of the present invention is to provide an elastase inhibitor that is able to impart resiliency and tightness to skin by inhibiting elastase by using in an external preparation, and is useful as a disease therapeutic agent.

As a result of investigating the elastase inhibitory activity of various plant extracts, the inventor of the present invention found that a solvent extract of raspberry (Rubus idacus L.) has elastase inhibitory activity, and further that this inhibitory activity is synergistically enhanced by the addition of hydroxyproline, thereby leading to completion of the present invention. In addition to the raspberry extract, the elastase inhibitor also contains hydroxyproline, specifically L-hydroxyproline. The optional yeast extract is prepared from yeast which has been cultured in a nutrient medium containing glycosaminoglycan that has been subjected to ultraviolet radiation, hydrogen peroxide treatment or both.