16 INTERVIEW
inside the company. What these tools give
you is the possibility of doing things or seeing things that were not able to be done or seen before. Nowadays, you can do transcriptomics [techniques used to study the sum of all RNA transcripts and their expression levels in an organism or even in single cells], and you can analyse the function. You can see all the genes that
are expressed or over-expressed with the use of an active ingredient. You can simply ask it to say which pathways are activated or deactivated. From there, you can find some activity with efficacy. It opens up the possibilities very wide.
TP: Mathilde, how is Lucas Meyer Cosmetics using AI? MF: It’s important to use AI for the design of new peptides. AI is a very good tool to target some specific peptides, and some specific designs relating to reactivity, as well as the receptors or the pathway that we are targeting. It is also useful to predict the performance and the design of the active ingredients. However, I would say that AI, in
my opinion, cannot predict biology. I mean that we will always have to perform experiments to be able to understand what’s happening in the cell culture. So, we will use AI as a tool to understand the result, but not to produce the result. I also see that AI can be used as
a tool to win some business, with marketing and commercial areas. Not just R&D.
TP: Laurie, you work in marketing. What is your view on AI as a marketeer? LC: As a marketeer, we use AI as a tool for saving time on certain tasks to spend more time on valuable tasks. Also, our R&D teams are exploring using AI to enhance the scope of screening at a higher scale. They are trying to find out if AI
can predict the potential efficacy of ingredients, but I totally agree with Mathilde that we will still need to confirm it (with experiments). In the end, what we learn from AI will still need to be confirmed. And the challenge is that AI requests huge amounts of data if we want it to work properly. As private industrials, we will sometimes face difficulties to
PERSONAL CARE April 2025
“ We will always have to perform experiments to be able to understand what’s happening in the cell culture. So, we will use AI as a tool to understand
the result, but not to produce the result. ” Lucas Meyer Cosmetics global R&D director Mathilde Frechet
access, build and work with such databases as it demands resources that we don’t always have. Building partnerships can be
a good way to access those huge datasets.
TP: So, there’s some work to be done yet before AI is ready to be used? MF: Sure. It’s all just beginning. TP: Christian, Evonik is known as a high-tech company. Will you be using AI to develop new delivery systems in the future? CB: I fully agree with colleagues that are using AI mainly as a screening tool at the moment. But also I think that the potential application of AI as a tool for product development has not been fully explored. AI could have much more impact in product development; to support us in different product development phases. We are only at the beginning.
Maybe the next step will be to fund proper expertise in order to use the full capability of AI for cosmetic ingredient R&D?
TP: What other trends do you see impacting cosmetic ingredient R&D over the next three to five years? LC: Climate change is changing everything, and we see this with consumers and cosmetics claims. In recent years, we have seen more claims about sensitive skin. In Europe, this is going to raise to
new levels in the coming years. In other words, the change in
climate and global temperatures will probably provide some challenges to skin. This is probably something we should look at.
TP: How else might climate change impact what you do? Will Gattefossé’s customers, for example, have an expectation that the products you sell them have a lower carbon footprint than now? LC: Even if it’s not something we claim about our ingredients, we are in the chemical industry so we have a duty to work on that aspect in our production processes. Also, we are increasingly talking
about frugality in innovation. So, it’s not just about providing more and more ingredients to the market. It’s about doing them better. We’re convinced that, if we want do things properly, and if we really want to make a difference to the environment, innovation has to go hand-in-hand with moderation.
TP: What trends do you see, Ricard? RA: There are a couple of general trends that you can find in all global markets right now: efficacy and sensoriality. More and more, the consumer is demanding efficacy. Sensoriality has become part
of the jigsaw of the cosmetics. This is also an important trend and something I expect to stay for many years.
TP: Do you agree about sensoriality, Mathilde? MF: I agree with Ricard about sensoriality, but I also agree with what Laurie said about climate change and what this will bring in terms of industry thinking about technologies. There is a difference between
global regions in the maturity and expectation about the greenness of products, the sensitivity to the sustainability topic, and in terms of regulation. However, my assumption is
that - over the next five to six years - the market will evolve towards biotech ingredients because the strength and the level of expectation in terms of sustainability will be so high that this technology will clearly be needed to address all the different parts of the processes.
TP: Christian? CB: I think there are other trends that are more scientifically based, such as epigenetics, which is a very big trend that is growing very fast. That is from the producer side. On the other side, I see
customers looking more and more into what we call secondary claims. This is not about efficacy but, for example, sustainability: whether the ingredients they are buying are sustainable, such as from fermentation and so on. This will become more and more important.
PC
www.personalcaremagazine.com
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