Hey guys, welcome back to Skin Anarchy. Today's episode is very, very special. It's another episode in our Lessons in Longevity series, and I have such phenomenal guests with us today. I am such a fan of them and the brand that they've created. I think this is truly the definition of longevity skincare. And this was the first brand that I personally discovered where I felt that finally scientists are taking the ropes and they're really leading this charge. So without further ado, I want to introduce you guys to the co-founders of OneSkin. We have Dr. Carolina Livera here with us, and we also have Dr. Alessandra Zanari. Welcome both. I'm so excited to host both of you.
SPEAKER_00Thank you, Dr. Ecta. It's a pleasure to be here as well.
SPEAKER_01Yes. So very excited for the conversation. I'm so excited because I know the first time we did this interview, uh Carolina, you and I spoke, and it was so interesting, and you really opened my mind into the world of longevity and senescence and those wonderful topics that I think finally consumers are wanting to talk about and they want to learn about this. And so I kind of want to take it back to that place and start there. If one of you could get us started on, like, you know, where where did the the whole idea begin for one skin? I know you guys spent a lot of time in the lab. So kind of get us started.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I can give you a brief background. So we we met, you know, more than it's gonna be 20 years ago, almost when we were doing our master's and PhD in the same lab back in Brazil. So Alessandra and I and two other co-founders, we got together because we all had this desire of translating science that we're developing in academia to translate into something that would impact people's lives, primarily in human health. And so we combined our expertise in stem cell biology, skin regeneration, tissue engineering, and genomics. And at first, we built this platform that we were growing human tissues in the lab, including skins, real human skins. And we used this platform to test products that were already in the market, both like efficacy and safety. And the more that we were testing like the so-called anti-aging products, we were finding some really interesting and also shocking results. A lot of these products that were supposed to promote like skin rejuvenation, they were actually at the cellular level causing some inflammation, some toxicity, potentially accelerating aging. And what we also saw is that this product has been have been outdated in terms of how they're approaching aging. And the
science of aging has evolved significantly in the past 10-15 years. By being here in Silicon Valley, when we moved here, we saw like a lot of companies starting out to target aging and in order to address like age-related diseases by using this novel approach, novel understanding of uh what are what's driving aging and what are the best targets to focus. And no one was using that new approach to uh apply it to skin. So we basically saw an opportunity to target skin aging from a different lens, going to the root cause of aging, understanding what are the driving mechanisms, how we can develop more efficacious products that are going to the root cause, are not causing any side effects. And in the end, they are improving your skin health, your skin function, and as a consequence, how your skin looks as well. So, skin health is always our primary focus, and the appearance, the beauty is a consequence of have having like a healthier skin. But basically, we saw this opportunity of bringing this novel approach to skin aging and at the same time also including skin in the longevity conversation. Because, again, all of those companies, they were thinking about how you rejuvenate to your heart, your liver, etc., but they were not thinking about your skin. And we know it's our largest organ and has this important impact in our health. So for us, it was like a great opportunity to align skin health and longevity to areas that we were very passionate about. And so that's when we decided to spend the first five years doing a lot of research and finding something new that we could bring to the market.
SPEAKER_01I mean, it's so fascinating that you you approached it like this. Even when I think about senescence, you know, and Alessandra, I'd love for you to speak on this because senescence is something I think finally we're hearing the word. The word is now out here. Everyone's like wondering what is senescence? And so tell us if and somebody wants to understand the first time they're hearing about it, what should they know about senescence and why does it matter for us?
SPEAKER_02Yes, absolutely. And we love hearing more senescence coming as a buzzword because we are talking about this since 2016. And
cellular senescence is a normal process that happens in our body that is accelerated with aging. So, what's happening is that when we are getting older, cells in our body accumulate damage and stop dividing. And when they stop dividing, they secrete inflammation. And usually when we are young, our immune system is very good on clearing out the excess of senescent cells in our body. But when we are getting older, the senescent cells start to accumulate, and the inflammation that they are releasing becomes toxic to the environment, to the healthy cells that are around. And this accelerates the aging process. So, in the skin, what that means is that you start having more collagen breakdown. Uh, this inflammation, when you have more senescent cells, also slow down, slows down the collagen production and disrupt your skin barrier. So we like an analogy of thinking of an orange, a bask of oranges. And if you have a moldy, like bad orange there, like full of that green things, and that starts spreading to other healthy orange, eventually you have the whole basket, you need to throw everything out. So senescent cells is like that moldy orange that's in the basket. The more it's secreting and releasing that inflammation, the more you're accelerating the aging process. So the idea in longevity is like how we can slow down this process by avoiding the accumulation of those senescent cells in the body. And when you start to clearing out or like switching off, reducing the damage and the burden that the senescent cells do in your body, you see an effect of like youthness. You see the tissue behaving, acting, functioning as a younger tissue that's more resilient, that's doing what it's supposed to do. So, in the case of the skin, it's producing a strong skin barrier that's protecting your body, it's producing more collagen to improve the firmness and elasticity of the skin.
SPEAKER_01That makes sense. And I love your thank you for explanation because that's so, so good. And I recently, and I'm wondering what you guys think about this. I was recently reading because I know one skin, you guys have beautiful products. So there's body product, there's the facial. Um, I love all of them. But one interesting thing I read was I was talking about neck skin with somebody, the skin on our neck. And it I was reading that the fibroblasts in our neck, because there's not as much supportive structure there, they are more prone to becoming senescent. And so it made me think because we often talk about facial skin, and we don't talk about your whole body is gonna go through this, you know, and depending on the thickness of the skin, what it's being, if it's there's mechanical stimulation going on, like we're twisting our neck all the time, all those kind of things that alters things like gene expression. It alters things, you know, like inflammation, like you had mentioned. So I would love for you guys to talk about this because I mean, you did come out with obviously the the facial product is amazing, but then the body product is equally as amazing. Was there a difference in formulating them? And what was your approach to that?
SPEAKER_00Jolina, you mean they were the little things. Yeah. Yeah. So I think the main uh so they are different products. They are both powered by our hero ingredient OS1, that we explain a little, we can explain a little bit how OS one works. But essentially, the face product was formulated with ingredients to that are more suitable to your face, so they're not supposed to be oily, and obviously, we don't want a product that would make your skin greasy. It's a light moisturizer that delivers OS1, that's our proprietary peptide that primarily targets senescent cells, and it has uh supporting ingredients that will help with as antioxidants, as soothing ingredients, uh, hyaluronic acid. We have like three types of hyaluronic acid, alantoin and vitamin E. And so it was designed to address the skin that it's supposed to expose to most environmental stressors on
a daily basis. While the body, it was interesting because, as a brand, like the second product that we decided to develop was a body lotion. And to us, this was very important because we want to treat your skin as a whole, it's not like skincare is not only your face for us, and so the body product came as a logical next product, and at that time that we launched, like most brands would ignore your body, right? They will not like really focus on your body. And this has been one of our best seller products since our launch, which has been really surprising, but uh a pleasant surprise because we are seeing now that people are caring more about their body, and they are they actually have issues with their skin. Their skin is getting thinner and crepey, and there are not many products that are addressing this out there, they're addressing aging at the cellular level. So, for this product specifically, it also contains the peptide, it has other uh really hydrating ingredients. We have like the mushroom extract, we have like very potent antioxidants like sulforophane, and it's a product that uh is uh again, it's a light moisturizer, but it's very hydrating, and people get really impressed with this ability because people hate having their bodies like greasy and you know put clothes on top, and this product like it holds hydration like the whole day and it doesn't feel like heavy. And the results that we have both in the lab in terms of increasing epidermal thickness, so it helps your skin to be stronger and thicker, so it will diminish that crepiness appearance, will help with the collagen production, plus the hydration, it's really, really powerful. So we we're really happy that uh um our customers that the community is resonating with that product that to us made a lot of sense, and it's they're seeing a lot of benefits when they use it as well.
SPEAKER_02Dr. Ecta, I think one differentiation of the approach of one skin is that the beauty industry have looked a lot to the face and how you want to make like very fast fixes to look young. And people were obsessed of like how I can make my face look young. And for one skin, we look at the skin not only as your face skin, but as an important organ in your whole body, and that's why our second product was the OS1 body. That's also why we also develop products for the lips, because the skin and the lips are also aging and accumulating uh senescent cells and getting damaged. And we also develop today's scalp. So our vision is like what we are looking at is the skin as an important organ for your health and not trying to bring products for quick fix to make you look younger. So that differentiates how we navigate launch by launch and how we bring these different products for different areas of the body.
SPEAKER_01I love that. I think that that's what made me fall in love with your brand in the beginning. Because I mean, the whole idea has been so solid. Every concept, I agree with everything you guys are saying and the way you're approaching skin science. Because I think when it comes to longevity, and and this is what I've seen, I don't know if you guys have seen the trends the same I have seen, but I've noticed that people are talking about longevity the same way that anti-aging was being talked about 10 years ago. And that's never the right thing because exactly what you're saying, it's not going to be immediate results, even though I will say this as a consumer of one skin, I'm also a consumer of the product. I've seen the changes in my facial skin almost immediately. Like you put it on the next day, your skin looks better. So you still get the results, but you know that it's a long-term, like you're on a journey for the long term. So that's I think that's the most fascinating part for me about the brand is that it's it's a heavy hitting skincare brand, but it's a heavy hitting longevity
brand. Like it's really longevity. So I want to I want to dive in because you guys have some great results. Like the data is phenomenal. So let's talk about the data. What was some of the maybe you know, Carolina, you can share with us like what were some of the numbers and the statistics that you saw in the very beginning phases that you were like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. And it kind of surprised you guys when you saw the data come back.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think we have both like data that we generated in the lab, which when we were testing, we're testing 900 peptides over the course of five years before we found OS1. And when Alessandra was doing all these tests, like, you know, uh in the lab, we found one that has reduced like up to 50% of the number of senescent cells. And we were so excited because we thought this can be very impactful. Like if we can, and and obviously, as we validated, it varies, varies from 20 to up to 40, 50 percent. But this was a very impressive data that we saw that this peptide is able to reduce significantly the number of senescent cells in our skin. And as a consequence, what we saw is that increased collagen production at similar levels that uh retinol did, but without the inflammation, without the irritation, we tracked all of the inflammatory markers and the collagen, hyaluronic acid, and we saw the inflammatory markers down, collagen up, and hyaluronic acid up. And so this was very, very encouraging. And then we formulated this product and we ran like a clinical study. And on this clinical study, as you said, we initially see improvement in the overall like texture, smoothness, tone. There is a lot of data supporting a melanin production and how OS1 is able to regulate because senescent cells also have a role in this regulating like melanin production and and consequently leading to hyperpigmentation. So we saw this improvement on tone. And then with time, after like six to twelve weeks, we saw improvement in firmness in uh 95% of the participants of this clinical study. We saw improvement in fine lines and wrinkles in over 787% of the participants, and they in the skin barrier, around like 20% improvement. And this again to us was really important because our our primary goal is to improve the the health of the skin and the skin barrier, it's one of the main metrics that we evaluate. So this is for the face product, and uh maybe Alessandra, you want to share about the body clinical study that we did that also connects the skin with lonjet in a very interesting way. And I don't know if you're familiar with this one, Dr. Eckt.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, I'd love to learn, Alessandra, if you can share.
SPEAKER_02Yes. I mean, I I will always also add into Carolina, remember we're very in the beginning when we start treating skins with products in the market, and we had a 300 premium anti-aging product in our hands. I never hold a so expensive and luxury product. And we applied, and I saw the opposite effect. And when we looked at the skin, the skin was shrinking, was like the epidermal layer were thinner. And I I told Carolina, remember exactly, we both said that I think I made a mistake in the lab. I will repeat the experiment, and I repeated, and the data was the same and the same. And we were, I was shocked at the moment to see like
how products that are out there can cause negative effects to your skin. And then when we go to OS1, seeing the opposite occurring, and we were comparing a lot with retinol and seeing that we had similar results without that inflammation. That for me it's a moment that I will always uh remember. But just continuing on the on our clinical studies and that approach that we were talking about, treating the skin of the whole body and thinking about the skin as an organ and how it's important to longevity, it's because the skin is our one of our largest organs and has this important function of improving, of like protecting your body from all the stressors from outside, from pathogens, from UV, from pollution. And when you have a strong skin barrier while you are aging, your body is protected. If your skin is getting more fragile with time and is accumulating more inflammation because of the size, we believe that can help contribute to other outcomes of aging later on and be a driver of chronic diseases later in life. So when we designed the study for the OS1 body for our body lotion, we recruited participants that were 60 plus. And we were looking not only we measure like the improvements on the skin barrier, on the texture of the skin of their body, we also collected their bloods. So we collected the blood at the baseline, and we looked to the inflammation profile, the inflammatory profile on the blood at baseline, and after 12 weeks. And we had two groups, one that used OS1 body, and another one that used a regular moisturizer. And the result was interesting because we saw more, we saw improvements of around 40% on hydration and on the transepidermal water loss on the skin barrier function on the group that was using the OS1 body. And more interesting, the overall uh inflammation profile of that group was reduced with significant reductions of some inflammatory markers like IL8. That's one driver of like chronic diseases later on. So, what we saw is when you have a stronger skin baria, when we you have a healthier skin, you can actually help to normalize, like to slow down the pace of inflammation in your whole body. And that starts to become extremely interesting and start connecting really like skin health and longevity. So skin now is not only I want to look young, I but it's I want to have my skin healthier so I can age better and I can improve my health uh while I'm aging. And that was uh uh one of like the best uh more interesting for us more exciting data more than several before and afters looking at that data and confirming this correlation of the skin health with overall health uh was a big moment.
SPEAKER_01That's huge. That's absolutely huge. And just for our listeners for their context I mean I'm blown away that you saw that change in the inflammatory load. That's the hardest thing and just for everyone listening guys when it comes to inflammation that's the hardest part of medicine. That's the hardest part. If you can control inflammation you could heal any organ in the body.
SPEAKER_00That's the biggest driving driver of aging right why we have this word like inflammation because the more inflammation that you have in your body the faster you age. So if we can lower that inflammation you consequently can you slow down the aging process.
SPEAKER_01Exactly and you know what's interesting when you guys brought up the retinoid thing the tretinoid these retinoids I've had this conversation so many times people email us they're always asking about how do I put my retinoid with the cream and all this and I always try to tell them this because no one wants to believe it. But these are things that are causing chronic inflammation in your body and your skin. So I'm not saying don't use them but you have to know that you have to know acids all these abrasive things that we're doing to our skin even going outside for prolonged periods of time it's chronic low grade inflammation constantly so the fact that you guys saw this that's huge. You know that's absolutely huge. And I feel like if anyone really wants to talk about what is anti-aging in my mind when I think of what's anti-aging, it's my body needs to stop being so inflamed because with age everything gets inflamed that's when people think see things like arthritis you start having joint problems you start having rashes up here where there were no you know like all sorts of things are coming up even when we talk about like perimenopause or menopause what's
the biggest driver of all the symptoms inflammation. That's at the heart of it. So I mean I think it's a conversation that goes so far beyond. I mean I think Carolina the first time when we spoke we spoke so much about senescence when I had so many questions for you about what is senescence? How do we figure out but it's really this inflammation that's really there and we got to master that and understand it as consumers.
SPEAKER_00And I think it's a great point that you brought is that the presence of senescent cells, it's not a problem, but they secret these inflammatory signals that contributes to overall inflammation. So they secrete like signals that will induce collagen breakdown that will induce like the tissue degradation. So it's their presence and the inflammation that they secrete that cause the damage in our body and that's why reducing their load can reduce inflammation and you have this positive effect.
SPEAKER_01Absolutely no I want to ask you and I don't know if this exists or not I'm just curious. We are now in longevity medicine. We're going into this world and I'm sure you guys have seen all the biomarkers there are companies that are measuring every biomarker in the blood everything is being tracked I have my own thoughts about all of that. I'm not gonna go into that but is there a biomarker that you have found to be specifically linked to senescence that we can really see as like a true correlation between senescence or the the load of senescent cells in our body and what we're experiencing. Is there anything out there like that?
SPEAKER_02So in our lab, uh the way we approach cellular senescence, I cannot tell you it's one single marker. We look to a combination of markers. So beta galactosidase is one of them then we have gene expression markers P16 and P21 that we see very correlated with the amount of senescence in the skin. And then there is the inflammatory markers as well sometimes DNA damage. So when we're analyzing cellulose senescence in the skin we usually use a panel of markers to show that senescence is being reduced and not a one single marker to be yes or no there is more or less senescence here.
SPEAKER_01Okay. That's interesting. Yeah that's good to know because I think that's where everybody gets confused I think with senescence. I know I was for very long time I was very confused about that because everyone wants to find that one target and then they track it for six months, 12 months.
SPEAKER_02But there's no one the thing is our biology is extremely complex and there are several mechanisms changing all the time. So what we are trying to see is like how this different mechanism connected between each other and how we see a pattern of change. Not it's not a single one-way comeback it's like a combination of different markers and different pathways being activated or not that leads to that tissue be functioning healthier or be still more inflamed and and accelerating aging. So it's very hard on all of this longevity mindset and longevity medicine to be able to figure out one marker. I don't think we'll never get to one single marker for longevity. And it and sometimes it's even personal because it depends on how much your environment is influencing your longevity so how you're sleeping if you're being exposed to sun or not uh how is your mental stress how is your community like aspect all of that's interfering on how our body's responding and is aging so I I don't think we'll get to a point that we'll have one biomarker but I believe there is a combination of them that if we track we can understand and kind of guide we want more this direction or not.
SPEAKER_00Yeah like I think if I were to assume I think the best proxy would actually be inflammation you know a lot of these inflammatory cytokines there are like some specific ones that are senescent associated and so these are IL8 I IL1 alpha uh mmp1s these are like metalloproteinases they degrade collagen so if we evaluate this pool of like pro-inflammatory markers I would say that they are the best proxy to kind of correlate with the levels of senescent cells but as Alessandra said when we're studying them in the lab we do different studies to confirm the level of senescence because it there is yeah there is not
only one marker that can define yeah but I totally agree with you especially on the longevity medicine if we're reducing inflammation you're probably reducing cellular senescence and you're probably improving other healthier markers as well and can be a good outcome proxy to measure longevity.
SPEAKER_01Yeah that makes sense and and everything like even the the enzyme activity when you look at enzymology and you understand like what drives it it is inflammation at the end of the day that drives enzyme. So that's very I mean it's just so fascinating because I think people want to put everything in a box. I think that's human nature. We want this like concrete answer like this is the answer for everything. But that's where at the heart of what you've created it's so phenomenal because you guys are talking about inflammation you're way beyond your years with this like you're you're it's almost futuristic what you've created because I wrote a review recently last year I published a review on inflammation and I defined that in the review and I was talking about looking at all the studies out there and one of the things that kept coming up over and over and over again was there are different markers for everything for any type of I mean inflammation in the liver is very different than inflammation in the skin very different than in the brain very different you know so everywhere you go you will have inflammation but it's different and your cells react differently to it. Some cells are more resilient some are not so it's not a one size fits all and I think that's where I think consumers have a hard time wrapping their head around that. And so it's important. But I want to I want to shift focus and Carolina I'd love to ask you because you have so many now different products in the line I love that you came out with a hair product a hair serum and so that's interesting to me because now everybody seems to be on a GLP1 and as you guys know with GLP1 many people are complaining about hair loss hair thinning is a major issue and I know that inflammation is at the core of that at the end of the day what was your approach to this coming into that category from skin coming into hair how did you guys manage that yeah so if you think like your scalp is basically a continue it's a skin right is a continuation of your skin so your scalp it's made of the epidermal layer and so what is affecting skin aging it has the same mechanism that's driving hair thinning and hair loss that are associated with aging meaning that senescent cells have a role in hair thinning and hair loss as well and so we thought okay if we have this product that works for the skin will this product also work to slow down hair thinning that is age related so first we decided to test this in the lab.
SPEAKER_00So you we use like a model that we cultivated hair follicles in the lab and we induce cellular senescence by exposing these hair follicles to a stress hormone basically simulating like a stress event that happens in our life that a lot of times will lead to hair loss. So we saw that we could induce senescence with this stress hormone and when we treated with the peptide we saw that we could reduce the senescence in vitro in the lab. So that encouraged us to develop now a topical formula serum that would be tested in humans. So we formulated this serum with again other supporting ingredients other antioxidants some prebiotics that will help you know balance your scalp microbiome that also has a very important role in maintaining the scalp health and also how your hair grows and then we tested this serum obviously including OS1 for six months on a clinical study and we saw really impressive data from this clinical study. We saw over the participants that saw you know hair growth on average 40% increase in density and 42% increase in hair thickness. And this was by using the product twice a day and with the use of a dermal to help you know the product absorption so we're really excited to show that obviously everyone is aging and there you know there is the age there is the hair loss that's genetic related or androgenic related that is not necessarily the main focus here but it's like the hair thinning that's happening over time or like or the hair loss that comes with a stress event or postpartum these are the conditions that we want to support with this product because our goal is basically support people as they are growing older and we know that hair loss or hair thinning is a big problem. And so we we're really excited to see the results from this clinical study and also the receptivity from our customers it's becoming our one of our hero products and we launched like last year so it's pretty new but uh people are seeing really good results. So I'm really happy to to to see this feedback and and again it always starts with a hypothesis and we run this series of experiments and we go to clinical studies and we only launch and Alessandra you know obviously it's a testament if we see really strong results. Otherwise we go back to the lab, we formulate again we do more studies and then we launch it and we've done this already twice with like two different products that we didn't get strong enough data. So we went back to the lab and to reformulate so I love that that's the true spirit of science we have to do that.
SPEAKER_01That's amazing I love that I mean but that's huge that those are amazing results. I mean I think for a long time I know with hair serums especially consumers were very frustrated because they weren't seeing any changes and people were applying you know I know we got we got so many questions because recently like hair oiling has blown up everybody's talking
about hair oiling that comes from the east there's been data around the idea of like nourishing your scalp which will in turn you know help with stimulating growth through blood flow or whatever that might be. But then yeah this is very fascinating to me that who actually have created a serum that has proven to help hair growth. That's that's huge.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely love that and as we say it's a product that obviously it takes longer to see results. That's why we ran a six month clinical study and people needed to be able to track to take photos it it's it's definitely a really tough condition to to treat and to help people and we understand the the frustration if if you don't follow the instructions really well. And and so it we are happy to see that you know a lot of people are seeing results with it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah no it's really fascinating and I want to actually I have a a question because I think because you guys are a longevity brand and like this is I think a very important topic to kind of talk about is that when it comes to longevity itself let's put everything else aside just the word longevity the concept of longevity what is one thing that you wish people would understand what's one shift in mindset or I guess thinking that you wish existed and the way people approach this topic compared to what they're doing now?
SPEAKER_02Yeah I love this question because we discussed this internally a lot of times as well and it's more as we're seeing everyone using longevity. And for me like one of my primary understanding of longevity and I wish like more and we are trying to educate people to understand this is that longevity means your body working healthier throughout the aging process. So that's when you're getting longevity. And to you to be able to help your body to maximize and optimize this healthy function you need to be targeting some of the drivers of aging your product your approach needs to be targeting a mechanism that's driving aging. Otherwise you're not talking about longevity. Just the fact that your skin is smoother this is not longevity. What is unique on our approach is that we have a molecule that targets one of the mechanisms of aging in the skin. And I think longevity when we talk about longevity and approaches for longevity they need to be addressing what we call hallmarks of aging that is the biological process that makes our body get older and age. So it's not as you said like using the same anti-aging approach and now change it in label and using the marketing oh now this is a longevity product. If you're showing to the customer that this new product contains something that can regulate the aging process that can target some of these hallmarks of aging this is not longevity. You're not making the the cell function as a younger cell you're not slowing down that aging process. So it can make you look younger but it's not a longevity uh longevity approach.
SPEAKER_00I love that I couldn't agree with you more yeah I agree and I think if I were to add I think the consequences by targeting aging at the cellular level the root cause and measuring and really understanding how you are promoting longevity is that you are delivering results that will be long lasting results that will be sustainable results that are like for the long term so I think we need to shift and as you said like our products will deliver some immediate results because we have other ingredients that will improve hydration and smoothness but the peptide and the work of the peptide in changing the makeup of the skin in in producing collagen this takes time and then so we always educate that it's like it's not like focus on the short term but like for the long term how your skin will be like in two three years five years from now how more resilient your skin will be how better your skin will bounce back from stressful situations and and just like how more balanced your skin is overall and so I think this requires like consistency but it's something that uh you know everyone wants right everyone wants that like a resilient stronger skin and so I think it requires that shift in terms of uh how you measure that because as we said is it's not a quick fix.
SPEAKER_01It's not I agree with yeah and I I'm glad you guys said this because I think that's the missing link. And a lot of people they'll ask us they ask like well I want to get into longevity skincare. I want to understand how does this fit into my routine and it's like the answer is always the same. It's an everyday
thing. You have to do it every day and I think that's where it's interesting what I'm seeing in the longevity space because we're essentially promoting wellness all over again. You guys remember when wellness took off where everybody was like finally talking about everyday rituals you need a routine those kind of things longevity for me when I look at it I feel like we're finally bringing that back in a better way. We're saying this matters this matters because of what well Sandra what you were saying cells don't care if you do things one day cell signaling doesn't happen when you do it one day out of a month. You need to be consistent every day you need to provide a signal to them and give them like a training over time. And so for consumers like I think it's a whole paradigm shift that's happening with the way that they're approaching skincare. And I think that's very very important to do that at this point because for so long we were bombarded I I can't tell you guys how many products I have that are like 20% acid like exfoliate your skin with 20% I'm like why do we need that? And so for so many years we're doing this and so all of a sudden it's a whole different way of thinking it's a whole different mindset.
SPEAKER_00Which is great right I think it's really good to see that the industry is evolving as you said a few years ago the stronger the the retinoic acid that you're using the better like you're stripping out your your barrier and your skin was exposed but it's okay because it's like it's smoother and you you look younger and now over time that redness that it that's not good long term. So I think and I'm with you like Not that you should not use retinol, but how you include that in a way that uh first you protect your skin, you strengthen your skin bare, and then you add that retinol as a boost, but uh in a way that's not gonna cause like underlying damage, right? And so I think finding that balance and an understanding how you can optimize for both. I think in the past, okay, I can only have like uh uh uh beautiful young skin if I'm very aggressive with my skin. And now I I mean look at us like we we all have good looking skin, but like being gentle with our skin, right? And and finding ways that uh we can read the our best look, but also have like the strongest, the the most radiant, the most like resilient skin. And I think that's the the important shift here.
SPEAKER_01I agree, I completely agree, and it's very well articulated because I think that's also I think also the shift is happening with the how people are spending money because they were so used to for so long, every month buying a new skincare routine, every day buying a new product, yeah, and everybody was like, I'm spending five thousand dollars a month and nothing's changing. And they're like, Well, I'm using my tretinoid, I'm using it every, you know, whatever, and it's nothing's changing. And it's like it makes you really think about yeah, it's a paradigm shift in thinking, but it's also a shift in consumerism. That this over-consumerism, the buying everything that we've seen for so many years, that is also shifting with the kind of brand that you've created. That's shifting that. I mean, I I can tell you guys, there have been so many times where I'm traveling, and the only thing I bring with me at skincare is just the one skin face product. That's it. I pop it in my bag, I'm good to go, I'm not worried. I have everything I need. Yeah, and that's amazing. I've never been able to do that. So I think it's it's so many levels, so many layers of this onion that get peeled back when you really think about like what is longevity and what does that mean for me as a consumer? But no, I want to ask you, I have a question because I know bioinformatics for me, I've always been interested in bioinformatics. And especially now with the rise of AI and everybody's you utilizing AI, especially in product development or like just science, I think in general. What are your opinions on this? The role of AI and the role it plays in things like screening peptides, screening molecules, optimizing these things.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, AI is definitely a very powerful tool because enable us to make assumptions and do testings way faster and then have like less things to validate in the lab as the last stage. So AI is coming to advance and accelerate the process of drug discovery. We'll not completely erase the fact that we still need to go to the lab and validate the findings from AI, but it really brings a way of us to explore better like novel molecules. For instance, now at OneSkin, we have the OS1,
our main peptide. We understand the mechanism and how he interacts, the peptide interacts with the cell and with a protein inside the cell, and we use AI to measure and predict that binding and that signal activation inside the cell. And now with AI, way faster than me screening the lab, we switch the amino acids on that peptide to increase that binding to that specific protein. And we're able to generate and predict how this new molecule will behave on the cells. And when we screen, just to go back, when we identified OS1, we started with 200 peptides. I pepetted all of them in the lab one by one. Out of that, we get five peptides. We use a kind of AI, and that's a time that scrambled and generated 700 plus peptides, but it couldn't filter those peptides. So I got back to the lab with 700 molecules and screened one by one in the in the lab. So now with the AI, what I'm doing is like again, I'm looking to our main molecule. I'm using AI to modify and see how like stronger this activation can be, how it can penetrate better on the skin. And instead of coming back with 700 peptides to test in the lab, I'm coming back with five. And they are probably going to be like a better hit than I uh if I was like screening 700 again. So AI is coming to do that to make you make better assumptions, understand better the different molecules, targets, predict better how will be the outcome of inneration of that molecule in your cells, and then uh this expedite the process of uh drug discovery.
SPEAKER_01That's so cool. I love that. And I you know what that makes me think of. I remember many years ago, there was one person at the university I was at, and she did predictive sequencing. And she was the only person in the whole university that could do that predictive modeling if this is going those if the ligand is going to go bind. And it makes me think of now, I don't know if you guys are going to be doing this in the future, but cyclic peptides are now coming into focus because of the same reason. You know, people are talking so much about how can we really optimize this binding quickly and in less concentration. So it's a very fascinating field, very uh quickly developing. So very exciting. But no, this is amazing. Thank you. I mean, thank you guys so much for educating us. This is, I mean, I am such a fan, and I have been for so long. And for everyone that's listening, if you guys have not checked out one skin, I don't know what you're waiting for. I've been advocating for it for since I met you, Carolina. I've been advocating for this the brand. I'm not lying. Everybody I meet, I say, This is you guys gotta check it out, and you really do. I've seen a change in my skin. It's obvious. The best thing is you can stick to it. That's my I think my favorite part about the brand is that you guys didn't clutter it. You didn't make like 50 SKUs, you didn't make a bunch of products. You said, This is your face product, this is your body product, this is your hair product, and and I think that makes it easy for a lot of us that don't have the energy to figure out the 15 steps and all that stuff. So yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, same. We are we are very intentional with our product development. And and as Alessandra said, like we want to cover our whole skin. That's why we have also a lip product. I mean, there are areas that are neglected that are also important. We have obviously no SPF for your face and for your body, and so our goal as a brand is to continue to be very intentional in a way that we can simplify and people still can achieve the results that they want. But uh, we are learning that less is more. If you can be like specific and targeted with your approach, you don't need like five products, like you did one product, right? And and I think that's where the industry is going, the the future is, and as you said, this is better for our skin, it's better for our pocket, and and so we are very happy to hear your results with our product too.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, it's it's wonderful, but I will ask, I have a request come out with a hand cream. I need a hand cream.
SPEAKER_00I know we've we've we've got that ask before. I mean, what do we suggest? Like use your body cream on your head.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, use your I know I do that. I actually do that, I have it next to my my bed, but like for travel or something, like maybe a small bottle of the body cream that would be amazing. So,
but no, this has been so wonderful. Thank you both so much. And I'm just such a fan, and I'm always cheering you guys on. You're really like truly, in my opinion, the spirit of what longevity science should be. And I love it, I love what you're doing, and I'm just such a fan.
SPEAKER_00We appreciate so much, Dr. Eck.
SPEAKER_01Thank you so much.