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Antiaging/Cosmeceuticals
Beauty in Layers: Multitasking Ingredients
By: Abby Penning
Posted: June 1, 2012, from the June 2012 issue of GCI Magazine.
page 3 of 5
Multitasking ingredients don’t only have to multitask in regard to offering multiple claims and benefits, though. They also can offer environmental or technical aspects that can help as another step in telling a brand’s story. “Saberry, an amla extract, has not only anti-tyrosinase activity and is used as a skin-lightening agent, but also has antioxidant activity, which helps to provide protection against free radicals induced by UV,” says Anurag Pande, PhD, vice president, scientific affairs, Sabinsa. “Amla fruits have also been studied for their MMP-1 inhibitory activity so they can help to reduce the breakdown of collagen in the skin and hence act as anti-aging. Another of our ingredient products, Sapindin, derived from traditional hair care ingredient soap nut, provides not only detergent action but also has antifungal action against the dandruff-causing agent Malasezzia furfur. Sapindin can be used to make a natural shampoo, which has foaming action as well as a cleansing action.”Another example from Lonza shows natural-based multitasking elements. “We are in the process of launching the Polyaldo line of naturally based emulsifiers, which are also multitaskers,” says Bennett. “They can be used in both hair and skin applications to create a variety of product types from surfactant systems like shampoos and body washes to traditional oil-in-water emulsions. Their next strength in trade is that they can be considered green, as they are naturally derived from renewable resources.”
Obviously, multitasking ingredients can also help brands catch onto larger trends while not sacrificing the results they need from a product, and an example of this would be Sabinsa’s Cococin, an ingredient obtained from freeze-dried coconut water from young coconuts. “Cococin can be used as a moisturizer on the skin and can also be formulated in hair care products to provide nourishment to the hair follicles and for hair growth,” says Pande.
Talking Differentiation
One of the major challenges in using multitasking ingredients is helping consumers to understand how the use of that particular ingredient targets and aids in offering a different solution, or how it offers more than one solution. “It’s a matter of context,” says Lefèvre. “We usually help customers in designing their cocktail of actives, taking care that they use the best ones in terms of benefits and claims versus cost and possible marketing claims on the packs. We send them a summary with scientific and marketing elements to support their developments, and explain the rational of each ingredient.” This way, the beauty brand owners, product developers and marketers also can understand the breakdown and use this language in explaining the product in a retail environment.
To help keep it clear, Lefèvre says, “We always promote the major claim/benefit of an ingredient first. I am thinking about Inoveol CAFA. This ingredient is a 5-in-1 anti-photoaging molecule, and this is the way we introduce it on the market. Then we mention that it is an antioxidant, bioactivated and in situ-released. This way, customers can use the terms ‘anti-photoaging, with the last generation of bioactivated antioxidant activated on your skin.’ Same for our needle-free hyaluronic acid. We first mention that it replumps and regenerates skin before mentioning that it favors moisturization.”
