Marty Lumain, APAC beauty care marketing manager told CosmeticDesign-Asia that it was just a matter of time before the pro-ageing movement to reach Asian shores.
“In the Americas and Europe, there’s more and more talk about positive ageing. Instead of fearing and fighting ageing, beauty consumers now want to age gracefully,” she said.
For instance, she elaborated, the market is seeing more skin care products that use pro-ageing terms such as ‘age-defying’ and ‘slow-ageing’.
Lumain continued: “In Asia, it’s still about skin whitening and lightening, but with consumers becoming more educated and knowledgeable about skin care, we see the trend slowly coming to Asia.”
She added that Aspar’age was a new concept and an innovative way to talk about ageing in an increasingly saturated market.
“Usually, when we talk about ageing, we say it is influenced by external factors like pollution, UV rays, even stress. Internally, we found that ageing is affected by Senescence Messaging Secretome.”
Senescence Messaging Secretome (SMS) is secreted by senescence cells that are in their “dying phase”, explained Lumain. The secretion of SMS contaminates younger cells and trigger their ageing process.
Bio-inspiration
Seppic studied sea hares, a marine animal to understand how to suppress the spread of ageing.
The sea hare was observed to communicate via chemical signals, which is made possible due to its diet of a red seaweed called Asparagopsis armata.
Further investigation found that the seaweed contained Mycosporine-like amino acids (MAA). By extracting it, Seppic was able to regulate the impact of SMS on the skin and reduce the contagious ageing effect on younger cells.
In order to evaluate the effectiveness of Aspar’age, the firm engaged 31 Caucasian participants aged 30 to 50. The subjects applied a cream with 2% of Aspar’age twice daily for 28 days.
The firm conducted a perception test comparing day zero and day 28 photographs.
“Once the 28 days were over, we mobilised the 31 subjects and an additional 33 evaluators – these were not clinicians, just the average consumer. These people were not trained to evaluate skin appearance,” said Lumain.
The test yielded 1,900 observations with panellists and evaluators concluding in favour of day 28 photographs compared to day zero.
“These 64 people were asked how they evaluated their choice and 85% responded that they evaluated based [on the presence] of wrinkles and fine lines. We saw that this was statistically significant,” Lumain said.
In-vivo instrumental tests were also conducted using a Dermatop which measured the surface, length and volume of the wrinkles.
Measurements showed a 13% reduction of wrinkle volume after 28 days of testing under the eyes.
The last test was a self-evaluation by the 31 subjects. Among them, 77% perceived their skin to be “well-rested and less tired”, 68% thought complexion was more even and 61% observed that it was more luminous.