31: The Science of Younger Skin – How One Peptide is Changing the Game with Alessandra Zonari

So we are doing a series on some of my favorite skincare and getting behind the scenes looks at the process, the science, all of the things. So if you're tuning into this episode, you may want to check out the other episodes surrounding it because it's fun and it's fascinating and it's science, y'.

All.

What an incredible time to be alive as a woman. Today we are interviewing one of the the founders and partners of the brand One Skin. You all know that I have loved Oneskin and used them personally for, gosh, I don't know, probably over a year and a half at this point. It absolutely has changed and impacted my skin in a positive way and I openly share that very frequently. Today we are going to be chatting with Alessandra Zonati. She is a PhD1Skin founder and CSO. She is not your typical scientist. She is a visionary and has a passion for longevity, skin regeneration and the occasional karaoke jam. Growing up in a close knit family in Brazil, Alessandra saw her grandparents struggle with age related diseases and soon became fascinated by the possibility of using stem cells to redefine the aging process. After earning a degree in biology and stem cell biology and a doctorate in skin regeneration and tissue engineering, she joined One Skin in 2017 as a founding member and chief scientific officer. Her contributions include 20 plus papers, three patents and the development of their proprietary OS1 peptide. Can't wait to share this conversation with you. Let's dig in. Welcome to Modern Thyroid and Wellness, the podcast that explores the intricate dance between health, wellness and thyroid, unraveling the threads that weave our vitality together. I'm your host McCall McPherson and I'm so thrilled to guide you on this journey to optimal wellness. So thank you so much for being here today. Everyone listening already knows fully about my love for One Skin. So I'm so excited to dig in with you and really just go a little bit deeper and take people through the science and the unique approach that you all have at One Skin. So thank you so much for taking the time and being here today.

Thank you Macau for having me here. I love discussing about our science and about what we have learned in this past year. So thank you for having me here today.

Absolutely. Tell me, take us through a little bit of the backstory. I kind of know it, but I would love for you to share how you all ended up in skincare and in the longevity sort of space in this.

Yes, absolutely. So I'm one of four co founders of One Skin and we're all Brazilians and We all have a background in science. We met when we were doing our PhDs before PhDs, even in grad school, doing masters and PhDs. And we connected by this passion of translating. Having that dream of one day translating all this knowledge that we were learning in academia to something that would be used by other people that would help to improve people's health. So in common we were studying stem cell biology. We were studying different areas of biology. Myself specifically from my PhD on I was researching how to improve wound healing. So I I was already studying skin biology since 2010. I then after I finished my PhD in 2013, I moved to Portugal. I continue my studies on skin biology and wound. He and the other girls, Carolina, Juliana and Mariana, they started the company in Brazil. But it was not going well. But had the opportunity to move to San Francisco in 2016. Carolina moved here to join an acceleration program that's specific for biotechs. And they decided at that time to focus the research of this new company on skin aging. Because there was a lot of emerging research and the necessity to avoid animal test for cosmetics. So the goal was like we had this knowledge of growing tissues in the lab. So the company One Skin was born with the idea of growing human skin tissue in the lab to understand this in aging process and to test and validate efficacy of products that are in the market. So in 2000 in Carolina moved here with this idea and starting like to. To to build One Skin. And then she invited me to to join the team because of my exper skin biology. So I also moved to San Francisco and we started this research on skin aging. And soon we start to realize that products, a lot of them that are in the market, they are not addressing root cause of skin aging. And therefore they are not super efficient on reversing skin aging. And it's because they are not targeting skin aging. And then we saw an opportunity to to dig into finding novel molecules that would really address what's causing skin aging. And when we come to this root cause is why we connect with longevity. And where we we were seeing ourselves as as a skin longevity company because we were researching for molecules that would really reverse the biology of the skin aging. And at that time in this was the beginning of Wen Skin 2016, 17, 18 we were doing all this research and with we thought we would find a molecule and license to lore out of the company. And in the process when we were getting the data and we found OS1 peptide and the research was extremely exciting, we start talking to some of those big companies. But we were so small, we only had data from the lab, and we saw how difficult would be to license that. And at the same time, we saw an opportunity that if we would bring by ourselves, we would be able to engage the conversation about skin longevity. And this excited us a lot. So a group of scientists with a molecule and starting to develop the first products, run a clinical study, and then we decided, okay, let's create one skin as a brand and let's bring this to the market. Some people thought we were crazy, that we didn't know anything about marketing, but we were believing on the data and the power of the data that we are having. And we saw the gap in the market. So we decided to bring by ourselves. And in 2021, we launched our first product, OS1 Phase.

I love it. And I mean, I feel like you're not innovative enough if some people don't think you're a little crazy. So hats off to you four for sure.

Yeah, that's the mindset. Absolutely.

Well, let's talk a little. Let's lay some foundational sort of information and talk about the science of aging and skin health and the intersection between those two things. Share with people some signs that we should be looking for that, hey, maybe our skin is aging prematurely, maybe it's aging early and things that we don't want to miss.

Yeah, of course. So, I mean, what's causing skin aging? Right. Like we. We know, we start to understand the skin aging basically because wrinkles start to appear. But this is like a symptom. It's a consequence of the skin aging process. The process of skin aging starts earlier and starts at the cellular level. So we start. We will have wrinkles later on in our lives because some cells, they stop dividing. They. They accumulate a lot of damage, either from UV exposure or damage from lifestyle, and they will stop dividing, but they will not die. And they secrete inflammation to the surrounding of the tissue. These cells start to be called senescent cells, also known as zombie cells are cells that were supposed to be done, gone, but they are still there, lingering around, and they secrete this inflammation that start disturbing the environment with aging, with time, if we start accumulating a lot of those senescent cells, what happens is that we start the inflammation secreted by the cells, start degrading the collagen, it start inducing healthy cells to become senescent as well. We start to have like a less resilient skin barrier, a thinner skin barrier which dries more your skin. And you start then seeing the visible signs of Aging. And the interesting thing is that when you're targeting these root causes, so the goal with one skin and what we were looking for was, okay, how reduce the accumulation of dissolved cells in the process of skin aging and how this can contribute to improving your appearance, but also lowering down this excess of inflammation that these cells produce. And our data was showing that, that we, when we reduce the accumulation of senescent cells, you improve, you start boosting collagen production again because the healthy cells are on a better environment. You have a stronger skin barrier. But the most interesting thing is that you reduce inflammation. And because our skin is our largest organ, this age is not only impacting your appearance, it's playing a role on your whole overall health throughout the process of aging. So that inflammation that you're reducing on the skin because of the size of the skin is contributing to a healthier body. And when we are aging, like when we cross the barrier of 65 years old, we get more prone to develop some chronic diseases like cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson, and a lot of these diseases, they, they start to appear because your body's accumulating inflammation that's leading to damages one of the causes of these diseases to, to appear. So for us, we look at the skin with the lens of being an important organ to contribute to your health. Because if you can lower the levels of inflammation in your skin, you're creating a better environment for your body as you are aging. And we did a very nice clinical study that was just approved for publication, so will be soon available on our website, was peer reviewed and we collected the blood of the participants before they start using our products in their face and whole body. And this was participants above 60 years old. And after three months we collect their blood again and we measured inflammation in their blood. And we were able to see that compared to a group that used a different product, the participants on the group that use OS1 was able to lower down the systemic levels of inflammation. So meaning they're becoming healthier. And that association that your skin is helping you to not only look better younger, but it's really helping you for your body to act and function in a better environment that for us, for me especially that was already researching skin aging. This is mind blowing and is where like we can see the real impact of our research and the contribution that this can have on the long term.

That blows my mind and is absolutely fascinating. And like I am, I mean I truly am a huge one skin fan and I'm absolutely advocate all day, every day for inflammatory reduction and how life changing that is from the inside out and the outside in. But I never thought thought about one skin reducing inflammation systemically, especially when it's applied like all over our whole body.

Right.

As the influencing then internally, which of course it makes perfect sense. But how cool that you guys did a clinical study and put all of that together. Fascinating. I'm so glad we got to have this conversation because I had no idea that you guys were working on that. Yes.

And I mean it's just, it was. The manuscript was accepted last week. So we'll be talking more about it because it's fully published. We can show better the result because now it was also peer reviewed by a journal. But it's extremely exciting and we want to continue researches on understanding this correlation of improving your in barrier, your skin function, reducing cellular senescence on the skin and how this is impacting your overall health.

Yeah, I almost do want to go backwards in the conversation of. We've talked about. Okay, one skin can reduce inflammation. That can help reduce the accumulation of those senescent cells. But tell me how things like inflammation and stress then influence aging or senescence in general?

Yeah, so the whole stress either coming from a lifestyle, poor diet, lack of sleep, stress of being too much, exposure to UV radiation, all of that induced cellular damage in our body and in our skin. So the cells, they start to accumulate damage on their DNA, the mitochondria starts to become dysfunctional because of all this influence of stress. And this leads to the cell to become senescent, to stop dividing, turning to a senescent cell. So basically stress and exposure to too much of UV radiation can be inducing the formation of novel senescent cells. And the accumulation of those senescent cells is what is increase inflammation in your tissue. And it's what is leading to the signs of the skin aging. So it's kind of like one of the contributors to the formation of novel senescent cells in the skin. So a lot of these stress inflammation damage that's coming from uv, they're leading to formation of more senescent cells. Therefore they are accelerating the aging process.

Got it. And those senescent cells, when they accumulate.

Yeah.

Start to secrete inflammation on their own. That then leads to collagen breakdown. Other like just loss of its skin elasticity. Tell me. Yeah, you tell us.

Collagen breakdown, which loss of elasticity on the skin, thinning of the epidermal layer, the breakage of this skin barrier, which leads to less hydration of your skin, reduce also the cell turnover because it Also impacted the stem cells on your skin. So your skin also is more. Has more dullness. The wound healing process starts to become slower. So the senescent cells is one of the root causes of why everything of this is getting disturbed. Because this inflammation that they secrete create an environment that is unhealthy. It's like leading to damage.

Yeah.

And is it using the healthy cells to also become damaged as well? So it's kind of a cascade. The more senescent cells you're kind of induced and you're accelerating this aging process.

It's almost contagious. You can think about it.

Yeah. Wow. It's contagious. I love that. Yeah.

Yeah. And tell me how I know. So this is a huge target for one skin and its ability to influence skin's age. Tell me how the OS1 peptide influences this process.

Yeah. So when we start to realize that the semiconductors is one of the drivers of skin aging, we specifically start to screen to molecules that would reduce the formation and accumulation of those senescent cells. So the OS1 peptide is a peptide very target to reduce the accumulation of novel senescent cells. What it does is that helps the cell to improve the DNA repair the repair machinery to avoid the accumulation of damage and also tells the cell to shut down, reduce the inflammation that they are secreting. By reducing the inflammation that these cells are secreting is avoiding now having other cells to become senescent. And it's also fixing the damage on cells that are receiving damage and would become senescent cells. It helps to fix that and avoid this formation of novos senescent cells. It's really a peptide that's targeting senescence by improving DNA repair, reducing the inflammation that they are secreted. And then now the tissue when has less. When this inflammation is coming down, the healthy cells, they restart proliferating better, producing more collagen. And they have this. This more ideal, healthy environment to function as a younger cells.

Wow. Which obviously they're more resilient to everything when they're younger. Healthier. Yeah.

Yeah.

Interesting.

Yeah. Improve the resilience of the skin. And what we did and what's super interesting right now is that we can measure and quantify this change of like how the skin is getting younger. So there are techniques in science that by reading the DNA of the cells, we can tell what's the biological age of this skin tissue. And what our research showed is that when we have human skin treated in the lab with the OS 1 peptide, we can reverse 2.5 years on the Biological age of the skin. So the skin, like by reducing the senescent cells, the skin is able to be acting as a younger cell. And we can now quantify that. And, and that's very powerful that we are understanding. We're not just guessing that, oh, it's maybe acting as younger. No, we are really being able to measure this in the DNA of the skin tissue. So.

Cool. And then as years go on, will you all continue to take those measurements? Because I only imagine the longer you use the OS1 peptide, the bigger the differential between actual age and skin's age. With the OS1 peptide usage, are you guys tracking that over time?

So we are running some clinical studies, long periods of one year. So to track this in humans and see how this is performing, this is on our pipeline. We are doing. There's a lot of challenges because these clinical studies, they are extremely expensive. And to you to really see difference in a population, you need a lot of people enrolled on. So we are running some of those. We hope in the next year we can bring some insights. But so far, the data that we have that we shared the most, they were ran in the lab in a scenario where we can control everything and then we can measure this. But we're also running these in humans, in tracking over a period of one year and seeing how these changes are happening in humans as well. So we can have this data soon and we can have another conversation about it.

Absolutely. And I want to tie in one other interesting thing that you guys have going on right now. I know this week your hair product actually launched, and I tuned into a whole educational seminar about it and was just fascinated. I would love to tell. I would love for you to share with listeners about the hair product and what it specifically is targeting and what you all have found about hair loss.

Yes, we're very excited with the launch of this hair serum because it's a combination of two years of research. So what we started to to understand is that the scalp, the sculpt, is the continuation of your skin. Right. So it's a tissue, it's a skin with more hair follicles. And the literature started to show, some researchers start to show that on the hair follicles when we are older, there are more senescent cells on these hair follicles compared to hair follicle of people that are younger. And we know that with age, with aging process, our hair starts to thin. When we are like even 45 years old, our hair is not as like with the volume as we were like at the 18, 20 years old. So our hair is thin, thinning with aging. And senescent cells are accumulating on this scalp, on this hair follicle. Also, when you have hair loss, there are studies that collected hair follicles from areas that you have hair loss compared to other areas on your scalp that you are not having hair loss. And again, selesenessence was identified on those follicles that have hair loss. Happening versus not so when we start to realize that senescent cells is playing such an important role on this thinning of the hair. We started the curious how our peptide would be able to reduce again accumulation of senescent cells in the hair follicle. And we did the research in our lab. We collected hair follicle cells, also hair follicle. And we tested the OS1 peptide when these cells are under stress. So what is very interesting, that stress hormones that are released when we are under stress, they induce cellular synapsence on hair follicle cells. And our OS1 peptide is able to reduce this formation of SNS and cells. So we decided to create a serum that would deliver the OS1 peptide to the scalp. We combine with other powerful antioxidants and also prebiotics. And we ran a clinical study for 6 months evaluating if we could improve the hair quality the hair growth on 30 participants. And we use a machine that can take a picture like a deep like close up of your hair follicles of your scalp basically. And after three months we took a picture at the same spot. And after six months again and our data was very impressive and encouraging that after six months we saw an improvement on the density on the thickness of the hair and on the hair that are on the growth phase, the anagen phase of growth. So improvements on the range of 38 to 43%. So by targeting, yes, this is very interesting because being able to improve 40% of the number of hairs that are in this anodizing phase, it's very powerful. And this can be used by people that start seeing their hair thinning. Because so far we, we have always this approach to be reactive to when things starts to happen instead of being proactive before they. Right. And we have seen a lot with this research on cellular senescence that the earlier you start to prevent accumulation of senescent cells in your body yourself 5, 10 years from now will be very thankful that you've done that. So this product for the hair also helps like in early stages of her thinning. It's already like helping to build up a stronger hair A more resilient hair improve the hair growth. So the data is very impressive. The products already available in our website, some of this data from the clinical studies there we are now going. This clinical study just finished less than a month ago was completed. We're still writing a manuscript. We want to publish this as well. So it's not published yet. But the data is very promising and.

Very interesting and just incredibly unique. Like an incredibly unique approach to hair loss that isn't available anywhere else. And I, I'm going to share more on my journey with one skin's hair product because I've been using it for the last month myself and people can tune in to my video about it and I'll certainly share. I'm excited. But hair loss is such a multifaceted approach and being able to layer in a unique and novel approach that isn't available anywhere else is incredibly powerful. And I'll tell you like my patients for thyroid, right they can come in and almost all women and they can hardly be functioning. Like they can almost be bed bound, cannot get out of bed. But if they are losing their hair they're like look, if I just have to pick one thing to fix, it's my hair. Like it is so important to women. So, so exciting to have another resource available because it's, it's, it's a big impact for women.

Yeah, yeah. And we're seeing more and more after like now that when we start to engaged conversation about hair loss how this is affecting so many people. Like sometimes we don't talk out loud that much but everyone kind on their journey, they are struggling that the hair see me and it just like takes so much from you like to see all that hair losing, shedding. So we, we are very like happy with the results we got with this product. We also analyzed the scalp microbiome in this clinical study and we were able to see that we improving the health of the scalp microbiome. We are balancing the scalp microbiome to a combination of bacterias that are promoting hair growth. So this is also very positive from, from the approach that we got and the results that we got. So the product is just out there. We are very, we are now in that exciting moment that our customers are starting to buy to purchase and soon we will be listening more the reactions, how do they feel about the product, how it's working for them. One thing that's very important to highlight on, on skin care but also more in hair is like the importance of the consistency. And it's hard right like but you will not. There's nothing miracle that you apply one time and will change your hair growth. So it's continuous use being patient. The hair cycle, it takes a while. So you really like start noticing changes after three months. More significant after six months is not something that you will see in one week. Do have reports on, on some beta tests after one month, two months, you start feeling your hair more nurtured, your scalp more healthy. But it really, it takes a little bit of time and needs this commitment of adding that to your routine as a self love care that later on you will be like very happy that you're doing that for yourself.

No, I agree. And that's hair loss in general or hair growth in general. It just takes time. I should add into this conversation because I know so many of you will be asking. But for those of you who are interested in trying one skin and haven't before and want to dabble in their eye cream, their moisturizer, their body cream, their hair serum, all of which I literally use every day, you can absolutely use the code McCall and get 15% off. And I would love to hear your feedback. My feedback from everyone who has tried it so far is they love it as much as I do. So let's dig in. The one thing I do like about the one skin serum is it's not really oily, greasy, it's like a water soluble almost mixture and so it's not depositing so much stuff on your scalp like a lot of minoxidil and things like that. Women don't want to use it because they almost have to wash their hair every day. It's nice that this isn't like that. So very good job guys and making it realistic for women and not make us wash our hair twice a day every day. So thanks.

We tried our best and this was one of the main goals. Like we cannot like if it's too greasy will be hard to use. We already know that needs a lot of commitment to use every day. So we tried our best and I'm very happy with the final formula as well. Like how it feels on, on the scalp and the hair.

Me too for sure. I want to tie in our conversation a little bit to hormones. So obviously we serve women at modern thyroid clinic for thyroid but also reproductive hormones, loss of estrogen and that kind of thing. Talk to me about how hormones impact our skin and skin's aging or even senescence.

Yeah, so hormones, they're very important on the skin health so they contribute for the cells to be able to Produce collagen, they contribute for the hydration of the skin. And anytime when we have imbalanced horm, either from thyroid dysfunction or you're going through menopause, that imbalance of hormones, your skin will feel the impact because they use those hormones to, to produce more collagen and to be a healthier skin. So what happens when we have imbalanced hormones is that you start seeing your. Your skin to become more dry, more dry, so less of hydration, eventually sagging. Because when you have less of these hormones on the skin, on your body, your skin is more susceptible to oxidative stress and to damage. And what these oxidative stress and damage do to your cells is that induce cell senescence formation. So when you have imbalanced hormones, you are producing more senescent cells on your skin as well, and they are accumulating. So what our approach does. And if this senescent cells are accumulating, you don't have the hormones, you have more senescent cells. You just accelerate more of that aging process, and you start to see even faster the lack of elasticity on your skin, the dryness, the dullness, the thinning of your skin. So what the OS 1 peptide will be doing here is trying to repair this damage that's occurring because of the unbalanced hormone state. But it will not fix that problem, either the thyroid dysfunction or the lack of strogen. So but it will help fighting the burden that the lack of those hormones is causing on your skin. So it's a very powerful combination for other treatments, like, because it's reducing the senescence burden, that a lot of times these phases of their life, they are stressing more your skin and inducing more deformation of those senescent cells. And if don't do anything about those senescent cells, they will stay there for longer, and then later on, even, like, you will keep accumulating those senescent cells. So what we see as a benefit of associating OS1 on those times of the life, patients that are with hormone treating, like, hormone imbalance is that you are reducing one of the burdens of that. That problem.

Yeah, totally. And it's almost. It's so interesting to see the parallels between skin health and like just our overall health. And it makes perfect sense. But for some reason, I think about them separately. It's like when women go through menopause, those changes in hormones trigger massive inflammation, and the skin's manifest of that. Right. Is just that probably increase in accumulation of senescent cells. And so obviously, it's great to combat that with hormones. But also like if we know we're already hardwired for that during those phases of life, why not directly target that on the skin as well? How powerful exactly?

That's the power of combining both.

Yeah, absolutely. Synergistic effect for sure.

Yes.

So I let's, let's talk broadly about skincare innovation. We are in such a cool season of medicine and life to have access to all of these innovative things. Right. I know one skin is challenging traditional anti aging skin care. What are some of the outdated myths that you all see that your research has debunked or shown to be outdated?

Yeah, I think one of the ones that I most like to debunk is that aging is about wrinkles. And that's what you need to fix. You need to not have the wrinkles and you are not aging anymore. Right. You definitely, if you apply Botox and you kind of like paralyze those wrinkles, you will look younger. But you're not fighting aging. Your body still with under the same stress levels, your body's still like accumulating senescent cells or accumulating inflammation. And this is driving like other consequences of aging. So the age is not about your appearance and all about just like getting rid of those wrinkles, but really like working at the cellular level to create more resilience and to create like more healthy environments so your, your body can work at the best, can always be like at the powerful best performance of the cells to produce collagen, to produce a skin barrier that's strong, to fight against the external stressors and protect your body. So it's more about like maximizing the potential of your body throughout aging so you can have a more resilient skin and body than just erasing the wrinkles so you just look younger.

Yeah, it's interesting that you brought that up. So one of my one Skin posts went kind of pretty viral and so many comments were like, oh, because I did a before and after. I did like really I worked hard to repair my skin from the inside out and also using one skin. And everyone's very quick and easy answer was oh, it's just Botox. And sure, Botox can help you have less wrinkles. That is not reversing your skin's biological age. It is not evening your skin tone. It is not improving your skin barrier. It is not reducing inflammation. Like if Botox did all that, that would be amazing. But that is a very, very different job that I think one skin does extremely effectively. Well and I think people need to know the difference because if I had to choose between reversing my skin's biological age and impacting all of those mechanisms or simply treating wrinkles with Botox, I would certainly choose this every time.

And then it's not to say that you cannot do the Botox, that you just need to be aware that is not doing all the other things. And either you associate or you make a choice. But I love your approach of like educating people about that. And we need to be more aware that it's not only like removing or doing a plastic surgery that your skin will get the appearance. It's important and we need to, to help on that. But more important than that and what your body will like, be thankful for you later on. Is this hard work, this small work done every day to, to create healthier and more resilient cells in your body?

Yeah, absolutely. Could not agree more. So many anti aging products always focus on the collagen, the hydration, like these isolated mechanisms. One skin obviously takes a different approach. Where do you see or anticipate the future of longevity skin care going?

I think it's, it's going on in the direction of more preventative and having like actives that are targeting these root causes of skin. So it's is where kind of one skin is leading a little bit, is shifting this mind of like okay, let's just make the skin look better. But it's really focused on like how we create the healthier environment for the skin to function as a younger skin. So I think a lot of the research on the skin longevity is, it will be coming more products that have this approach that did the research because this approach needs more science backing it. So I first see more scientific products coming out there where a lot of research was done to ensure this increase of the healthy environment for the longevity of the skin. So I believe a lot of the research and I can already see the key players, even like big players starting to re look on how, how they communicate skin aging and probably also do internal research more specific on improving this health because healthy cells, they will act as a younger skin and you have the consequence of a better appearance as well. But instead of just trying to do this makeup, I, I think there will be more things going to the root causes.

Yeah. And honestly I think you all are driving that conversation and forcing that. So thanks for making that happen because we need it. Thanks for being on the forefront of all of that. I know it's not always easy. Couple of questions from my people, from my Followers that I thought we should ask. One repeat question that I got a lot about was eyes. Like what can we do for eyes? And I know that you all offer an eye product is actually what I started with on my one skin journey. But I wanted you to share because it is a little unique share with us specifically about one skin eye and how it can benefit us.

Yes, of course. So the eye area is a very interesting area. The skin around the eye. We know that is where it starts to show the first signs of aging. The crow's feet and the sagging. And what's interesting is that there is a research that measured the biological age of the skin under the eye on the eyelid and compared with the temples and the forehead. And the skin around the eye is 20 to 30 years older than the temples. And that's because it's accumulating more of senescent cells on this area of the skin because the skin is thinner. And it's thinner to allow the movement of our eyes. That is the reason why it's thinner compared to the other rest of the face. But because of that accumulates more damage and accumulates more senescent cells and you start seeing the visible signs of aging sooner and faster in this area. So what we did with our research when we realized that there is this difference in the skin around the eye, we partner with a dermatologist and we. We use skin leftover of skin from blepharoplastic surgery and like optimize our OS one phase formula to a higher concentration of the peptide to deliver more. More of the benefits of the OS1 peptide to the skin area. So the. The whole process of developing the eye cream was all tested on eyelid skins comparing to our face product. And we were able to see that our face product is reducing solar senescence on the eyelid skin. But this new version of the cream is more powerful. So especially like if you already see more signs of aging, this area using the OS one eye will deliver more stronger results than the face product. So yeah, and it's interesting because a lot of one skin has been an evolution of the things that we are learning and we are guided by what we learn in the science that's coming from other groups as well. So when we launched the face product and the body, that was the two products that made like, okay, we want to deliver OS1 to your whole body. So a face product and the body. We were not immediately thinking about an eye cream. But then we learn all about this more accumulation of senescent cells and accelerated Aging on the eye skin, the skin around the eye. So it made sense for us to develop the eye cream. And then eventually the same happened with the scalp. Like was because of research showing that it's accumulating on the hair follicle. And then, okay, let's bring this idea to the lab, let's start testing and if we confirm that there is a power there that we can deliver something better, we'll bring it to the market.

I love it. Love it. And pro tip, I use my one skin eye cream around my eyes and I also use it on my nasolabial folds and like my intense forehead wrinkles. So for anyone interested, how about it?

That's amazing because where you have wrinkles, it's usually associated with accumulating more senescent cells. And we have a lot of customers that do the same. And sometimes around the, the mouth or anywhere that you see a little bit more of accumulation, you can do a spot treatment there.

And I'm going to do that around my mouth. I needed that. Thanks for that tip. That's a good one. Another question that I get frequently is tell me about if your products are clean. I can definitely give my interpretation of the data that I have, but I'd love to hear from you.

Yeah. So I mean this whole concept of what is clean and not it should be, it needs to be shift of just beyond of what are the ingredients that are there. Because a lot of times we anything can be, I don't know what is clean or not clean. What we do, the process of all the products that we develop here is that we constantly test on skin samples to see how they are reacting to that product. And if anything is causing any kind of toxicity or is increasing or it is increasing inflammation on the skin, we avoid that. And then when the formula is ready, we do studies in humans to confirm that's not causing sensitization. We test on third parties the whole everything on the formula. If there is heavy metals, we test the cleaners for anything that would be in percentages that can cause toxicity to the skin. So we are very particular on delivery efficacy on the safe formula that will not cause damage to their skin. And I think that conversation of efficacy and safety is way more important than clean because sometimes I even like what's the concept of what is subjective? It's a little bit subjective. And if you say, oh, it's only natural things that you find sometimes. Yet if you only apply some oils on your skin, natural oils, they will not do anything to your skin. They will also not do target the aging process. So you need actives there to do that. And the rigorous process that we do to increase to confirm safety, I think that's what's the most important one that people need to be aware and take away.

I love that and I love the approach of hey, let's be realistic here. Like if you're looking for a product that is so clean that it doesn't contain anything but like coconut oil or castor oil, like go for it, have at it. That's your risk versus benefits Skin priorities. I definitely take a balanced approach. But even in that balanced approach, my opinion of one skin is it is extremely clean. And I use an app called Think Dirty that largely pulls data from the environmental working group which is definitely a top tier agency. And looking at the cleanliness of products and every ingredient in the moisturizer, the one skin face is clean. There's one that is questionable that isn't supposed to be used on diaper areas in children in France because it might cause an allergy. You know. So I mean I would say in my professional experience that is extremely clean and I am very comfortable using that product on my face and body etc.

And a lot of times with those apps what I want to bring awareness is that and just so people think a little bit more into sometimes they are scanning the ingredients and just the fact that something is there, it doesn't mean that's in the concentration that will be toxic for you. There is always, even water can be toxic if like you drink too much. So everything can be toxic or non toxic depending on the concentration that it is. And a lot of times those apps, they can, they don't know that. So just relying on some apps to look to some products can be a little bit hard because you may be disconsidering something because a questionable ingredient there. But that ingredient was there for a reason and is on a concentration that's safe. So we, we go beyond on like testing working with some partners that understand all the ingredients, the concentration, do more tests on the toxicity effect. So I would say when looking to products, scanning can be good because sometimes you really want to avoid some ingredients and you can already lock down that. But if there is a product that you're still interested, go check on their website, see if they have like safety tests on that because sometimes people that ingredient is on is there for a reason. Like preservatives is one, one thing. Sometimes products need to have preservatives to avoid the growth of bad bacterias on them. But if they're used on a concentration that's small enough, they will not be harmful to your skin. You know, they are just doing what they need to do, that's preserve the formula. So they're, they're more like of seals that can give that kind of information. For instance, all our products, we apply to the National Eczema foundation, so they test our products. They know all the concentrations of all the ingredients. We need to run like safety tests with them to get that seal. And that stamp means that our product.

Is safe and it's safe even on really sensitive skin, which says even more. Well, this has been delightful, as I expected. I just adore you all, everyone on your team. Thank you so much for taking the time to educate my followers and thank you for all the investment and effort you've put into helping women age beautifully and confidently. And I'm just such a big fan and I can't wait to see what OneSkin is up to next.

Yes, thank you for having me here, for being this incredible partner on sharing, like on digesting a little bit of this science, this, this topic that is so hard sometimes to communicate. And you, you do the work of research and bringing this more digestible to your audience. So we appreciated that a lot. And anytime, we're always very happy to come and talk to your community and answer any questions that they may have.

I love it. Well, thank you so much and see you again soon.