It is with great pleasure that we announce that the Dr Irena Eris Cosmetic Laboratories has won the competition for financing for two research proposals.
‘From mitochondria to innovative cosmetics with a protective effect’ is a project carried out in cooperation with the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology of the Polish Academy of Sciences as part of the competition of the Applied Research Programme organised by the National Centre for Research and Development. This competition received 1 140 applications - 1 080 passed the formal assessment and advanced to technical assessment. Of these, 734 applications passed, and 189 projects received funding. The Laboratory’s project got 29.7 points (the most out of all the applications) achieving first place in the life, agriculture, forestry and veterinary sciences field, and is the third-highest ranked project in this competition!
The research objective of this undertaking is to identify and evaluate substances whose specific interaction with mitochondria has a beneficial effect on skin cells, stimulating processes that slow down damage caused by oxidative stress. As a result, the commercial objective of the project is to launch new, innovative and dermo-protective cosmetics. The cosmetic product, which is the result of research, will be able to significantly delay intrinsic skin ageing, and, most importantly, minimise the adverse impact of external factors that significantly accelerate the body’s ageing process. Tests designed to confirm the “positive effects” of cosmetics put on the market are often superficial and not always reliable. The essence of the proposed project is to provide reliable and detailed documentation of the mechanism and actual protective effects of the substances on the basis of which they are formulated.
The applicant is an industry-science consortium with the participation of two research groups of the Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology, which are leaders in the field of mitochondrial bioenergetics and biochemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences, and the Dr Irena Eris Cosmetic Laboratories which is one of the leading cosmetics companies in Central Europe.
The project will use novel methods of verifying the mechanism of the effect of substances on mitochondria, and, consequently, more effective methods of searching and selection of a wide range of substances that are biologically active for mitochondria with additional protective properties for skin cells.
The second research proposal, ‘Advanced research techniques to study the impact of active substances on skin cells with a view to developing an innovative cosmetic product formula’, implemented in cooperation with the WARSAW UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY FACULTY OF MATERIALS SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING as part of the Applied Research Programme competition, got 28.2 points (of the maximum 30) and finished third in the ‘Interdisciplinary Research’ field.
The dynamic growth in demand for products that improve the skin and prevent its ageing is now becoming a major challenge for the cosmetic industry. When launching innovative cosmetic products, companies are increasingly looking for new substances, the effectiveness of which they want to prove using the most modern research techniques available. As a result of an analysis of the needs of the cosmetic industry and their research potential, cooperation has begun between the Warsaw University of Technology Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering and the Dr Irena Eris Cosmetic Laboratory. The main objective of the cooperation and implemented project is to create an innovative cosmetic product that will be able to significantly delay the skin ageing process, and, most importantly, minimise the adverse impact of external factors that significantly accelerate the body’s ageing process. As part of achieving the main objectives, tests will be conducted to determine the effect of peptides and proteins that belong to the group of growth factors on the physico-chemical parameters of skin cells.
The applicant is an industry-science consortium with the participation of a research group of the Warsaw University of Technology Faculty of Materials Science and Engineering, which is a leader in the Materials Science and nanotechnology field, and the Dr Irena Eris Cosmetic Laboratories.
The project will use novel methods of verifying the mechanism of the effect of substances on skin cells using a unique apparatus for examining the structure of materials: atomic force microscopy (AFM) as well as scanning electron microscopy and transmission electron microscopy.
