Understanding Metabolic Pathways for Skin Anti-Aging

Global gene expression profiling provides a useful means to identify key aspects of the skin aging process, and provides information to help develop new skin technologies. Important aspects of skin aging that can be addressed include skin hydration, barrier, matrix, pigmentation and antioxidant capacity. Human skin equivalent cultures allow topical application of test compounds, combinations and products to their stratum corneum surface and measurement of predictive biomarkers. Using this in vitro biomarker approach, it is possible to detect skin barrier enhancement in response to the compounds niacinamide and hexamidine, matrix effects to the peptides Pal-KT and Pal-KTTKS, and hydration and matrix responses to niacinamide and N-acetylglucosamine.