Measuring Antioxidant Capacity of Cosmetics with Emitted Light

Knight Scientific Ltd. offers a kit to manufacturers to measure the antioxidant capacity of their finished  nutraceuticals and cosmetics to justify claims, produce technical documents, confirm batch uniformity and more. The company's Analysis By Emitted Light (ABEL) tests are based on the light-emitting protein Pholasin, an extremely sensitive substance.

The tests reportedly allow manufacturers to quantify antioxidant activity in proposed ingredients. Manufacturers can use the ABEL-Relative Antioxidant Capacity (RAC) scores in their formulations with regard to the cost of the ingredients and the antioxidant capacity of the finished product. In addition, they can identify possible synergy between ingredients and monitor changes during manufacture. Additional benefits of the kit includes: confirmation of batch to batch uniformity, the ability to determine the shelf life of products, assistance in producing technical documents to support marketing, assistance in designing experiments to test the efficacy of products and support for antioxidant claims.

The company's approach is to challenge the sample with one or more oxidants; free radicals such as superoxide, hydroxyl radical and peroxyl radical, and other reactive oxygen species including peroxynitrite and halogenated oxidants. The resulting ABEL RAC scores per mg of sample or finished product tell the manufacturer precisely how much antioxidant protection the product offers.

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