ANTI-POLLUTION
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Defying photodamage with white cocoa peptides
Eloise Collet, Magali Bonnans, Yolene Ferreira – Ashland
With consumers increasingly focused on skin health, the prevention of skin photodamage induced by solar radiation is a major expectation in the sun care and day care categories, leading to a rising demand for products that provide more than just UV protection. A current move in cosmetics is to address
photodamage with biological active ingredients delivering key benefits such as antioxidant protection, anti-ageing efficacy or evenness of the skin tone. What if a bioactive could deliver all these benefits at the same time? Ashland has made a breakthrough with
Blumilight™ (INCI: Water (and) Butylene Glycol (and) Theobroma Cacao (Cocoa) Seed Extract; hereafter, the biofunctional ingredient), a 360° bioactive solution to defy photodamage. Photodamage is defined as skin damage due
to chronical exposure to ultraviolet radiation (UVR) from the sun. The primary mechanisms involved in photoageing are: 1) direct damage to the DNA of skin cells; and 2) photo-oxidation of skin constituents like proteins or lipids. The main clinical symptoms of photodamaged skin involve deep wrinkles, laxity, and hyperpigmented spots. For decades, sun protection efforts have
focused on the UV range of the spectrum. However, the importance of the photobiological effect of visible light has now been largely described, and complete photodamage solutions need to consider UVR and other ranges of solar radiation, such as visible light.1
Visible light, friend or foe? Blue light or High Energy Visible (HEV) light is
the part of the visible spectrum between 400 and 500 nm. Close to UVR, it has one of the shortest, highest-energy wavelengths. Sunlight is our major source of blue light, but artificial lights and electronic devices also became a significant source of exposure in our modern life.
Blue light is described to display some benefits, such as increasing alertness and modulating the circadian rhythm. Artificial blue light is also used in LED therapy under dermatological control to treat skin conditions (acne, psoriasis, etc.) and improve wound healing. But an increasing number of scientific
evidence now points at blue light as one of the major contributors to skin photodamage, along with UVR.2,3 Why is it so harmful for the skin? Visible light
has a greater ability to penetrate the skin than UVR, hence all skin layers can suffer from blue light photodamage. Prolonged exposure to HEV light generates skin damages at molecular, cellular and tissular levels such as the generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) leading to oxidative stress and protein carbonylation; DNA damage, cytotoxicity and mitochondrial dysfunction; increase in MMP-1 and decrease in collagen I production, leading to dermal matrix degradation; not to forget a sustained upregulation of melanogenic enzymes leading to intense and long-lasting hyperpigmentation, especially in dark skin types.4,5
Visible light can induce “photosensory stress” to the skin All those photodamages are not only the result of a physical event, the skin can also biologically sense the light. The skin is equipped with photoreceptors that can convert the luminous signal into a biological one. Among them, opsins (OPN) are a family of
Figure 1: Suggested mode of action of skin pigmentation control mechanisms
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light-sensitive transmembrane receptors, well known in the retina, and recently described in the skin. OPN are the main family of skin photoreceptors, in particular OPN2 and OPN3 are abundantly expressed by skin cells (keratinocytes and melanocytes).
June 2025 PERSONAL CARE
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