[Pharma]

DLR94 said:

…I will also research the antioxidants that you have mentioned.  

Don’t bother searching alpha-lipoic acid. It’s not an antioxidant when used in a cosmetic product. It requires biological/chemical activation which it won’t get in a bottle.

Else, keep on trying, mix stuff, see and learn!

[Pharma]

From their brochure:

Greyverse™ contains an innovative α-MSH biomimetic peptide able to act on the different causes of the hair greying process. It offers an unprecedented efficient solution to prevent, stop, and reverse this inevitable sign of ageing.

The alleged α-MSH biomimetic, palmitoyl tetrapeptide-20, does neither share any sequence homology nor any sign of structural relatedness with α-MSH and it’s synthetic ligands which are used for in vitro tests and in clinical trials. However, its sequence is for example found in cardioexcitatory peptide from the African giant snail, a salivary proline-rich peptide P-C), and the chemokine CXCL16, and the adhesion molecule ICAM-1.

The term ‘biomimetic’ refers to a compound which elicits a similar effect in a cell, an organ, or a whole organism without telling anything about the mode of action. As the text states ‘able to act on the different causes’ although most aren’t even known, this leaves mode of action to imagination. Although, later down in the brochure, they mention ‘Two factors…cause…hair greying…: the decrease in melanogenesis and the increase in oxidative stress in the hair bulb. Due to its complete mechanism of action, the peptide…is able to act simultaneously and efficiently on both factors by stimulating Melanocortin 1 Receptor.’

What is a ‘complete mechanism of action’? Also, activation of MC1R does not help against oxidative stress (neither simultaneous nor efficient action will help) and it’s not even clear how well real ‘stimulation’ (scientists use the terms activation or agonism) actually does promote melanogenesis in greying hair. Besides, what does activate MC1R is called a drug, not a cosmetic, and it would not just colour hair dark but skin as well.

The ‘offer of an unprecedented efficient solution’ is just ridiculous because it is precedented by more efficient solutions, which, for obvious reasons, are not simple tetrapeptides coupled to a fatty acid. Furthermore, greying isn’t an inevitable sign of ageing but simply an often happening consequence of progressing life.

In a ‘scientific’ publication I found (and read), they mention:

The palmitoyl tetrapeptide-20 (PTP20) is a biomimetic peptide derived from the α-melanocyte-stimulating hormone (α-MSH). The sequence was chosen to interact with its receptor, the MC1-R. As said, The sequence as nothing to do with α-MSH and the tests they ran may be okayish but they more resemble a ‘Let’s see what we have laying around…’. SIRT-1 is a good example because several cosmetic companies think it’s great for marketing (I worked with a few people who did their PhD on SIRT and also did side-jobs for cosmetic industries). An activity on SIRT doesn’t prove anything.

You also find palmitoyl oligopeptides nearly exclusively as cosmetic ingredient… guess why.

[Pharma]

As long as it stays wet, yes, sure. Go work constructions and you’ll know what I mean 🙂 .

[Pharma]

@lewhitak Thanks for sharing! Now that’s the FIRST useful publication regarding antimicrobial Leuconostoc ferments… or rather what I was fearing. This explains quite a lot… more than one wishes to know… although it’s good that I now do. Thanks again!

Given that Active Micro Technologies has quite the array of antimicrobial plant extracts where I can’t find anything useful (apart from salicylic acid in ash tree extract), this one proof of fraud is enough for me to NEVER ever consider buying anything they sell and also to be very cautious regarding products which contain their preservatives. It’s disgusting, a shame, and a mockery of all the honest people who try to make as natural cosmetics as possible and end up with junk. They should be sued and shut down.

(@Perry: How do I post a vomiting smiley?)

[Pharma]

It’s very poorly water soluble which means, there is nearly no free base available which therefore gets neutralised easily. Nonetheless, it can burn skin even more but requires more time (and more sweat).

[Pharma]

It must be THIS picture. The text suggests, on an subconscious level, fully coloured hair after one month. I cite: In one month, 31% of participants saw less white hair, 28% said hair
looked darker, 31% said roots grew in darker, and 63% said hair looked
healthier. In a three-month span, 64% saw less white hair, 57% said hair
looked darker, 50% said roots grew in darker and 71% said hair looked
healthier.

@Perry: If you need more proof than that… LoL!

[Pharma]

Wickers said:

…Lactococcus Ferment Lysate (9%)

Ophiopogon Japonicus root extract (7%)

…

Leucidal Liquid (4%)

ProBioBalance [water, milk proteins, bifida ferment lysate] (4%)

…

Hydrolyzed Yeast Protein (3%)

Bio Chelate [water, saccharomyces zinc, saccharomyces copper, saccharomyces magnesium, saccharomyces Magnesium, saccharomyces Iron, saccharomyces Silicon] (2%)

Hydrolyzed hemp protein (2%)

…

Is silver citrate compatible with the ingredients above?…

Silver is neither compatible with proteins (see above ingredients) nor phytate and may interfere with your ominous Bio Chelate.

Hence, not a good choice as antimicrobial unless you add it for claims only.

[Pharma]

No, the two acids won’t work at that pH, they turn into their salt form and be nothing more than pixie dust, great for claims but nothing more.

[Pharma]

pH in sensu stricto requires water. There are means (you don’t have) which allow pH determination in non-aqueous solutions.

Can you test pH in anhydrous products? Yes, sure you can test… the result will simply be arbitrary or reflect pH of a molecularly fine layer of moisture covering the electrode.

[Pharma]

lushderma said:

…My thinking is that using less water in the base will make it thicker but will then be thinned out once the liposome solution is added. Is this flawed?…

That’s basically what everybody else would try at first. There’s never a guarantee that it works but a very high chance.

[Pharma]

THIS is good reading and might help (though not for your question regarding cetyl alcohol which works better in water containing formulations).

Me, I’d add some cetyl alcohol for the smoothness and use carnauba wax, candelilla wax and/or hydrogenated oil for the oil gelling (tried gamma-oryzanol/lecithin too but that’s getting expensive). Simply add a bit, if it’s too soft, add a bit more and repeat. Drawback is the time it takes to fully solidify which might be up to 2 days. If you quick-cool in the fridge/freezer, stop adding more a bit before you have the wanted consistency.

Because I don’t know how the two oils will affect the product, I can’t further help you and you’ll have to try. Trying is fun, often more than simply reproducing some established formulation of somebody else!

[Pharma]

Depending on the probiotic bacteria you’re using, low pH and low water activity plus high salt might work… but then, your product will ferment and then the little guys will slowly start to die once they run out of food (food = your facial cream). Use an anhydrous formulation with lyophilised probiotics instead or switch hobby and produce plain yoghurt or kombucha and not rotten cosmetics .

More or less safe food grade preservatives are benzoic acid/benzoate and sorbic acid/sorbate. They don’t distinguish between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ microbes.

[Pharma]

Because oil gelling doesn’t equal calculated average melting point and depends on several factors such as crystal networks, it is impossible to predict whether this will be solid, soft, liquid, or even “two phases” (macroscopic suspension of fat in oil). Even the way you prepare it (mostly cooling and mixing speed) will influence the outcome.

If I ignore tetrahexadecyl ascorbate and squalane for what they are and treat them like ‘normal’ oils, this formulation will likely be quite hard. Why do you use emulsifying wax NF? If you want an oil binder, wouldn’t a low HLB emulsifier such as sorbitan stearate and/or glycerol stearate be more suitable? Unless you’re planning on having something easier to rinse off or does the ascorbate ester require an emulsifier?

The ‘problem’ with my reasoning is that the two oils are unique and don’t always follow the norm i.e. may greatly reduce viscosity or inhibit oil gelling (crystal formation).

As an example, 2-3% candelilla wax or 4% carnauba wax can already gel oil to a vaseline like consistency and may turn it hard at >10%, 2-6% sunflower wax and some Tween and water turn olive oil into ‘margarine’, or 2% cetyl alcohol may result in a noticeable increase in viscosity of certain oils (and you have nearly 15% of fatty alcohols). Also, beeswax at ~10% gives the consistency you’re looking for whereas your 5% are in the high viscosity liquid range.

Mixing different oil gelling agents doesn’t always follow an additive rule, some even inhibit each other whereas other combos such as Tween 80/Span 80 or gamma-oryzanol plus beta-sitosterol or lecithin act synergistic.

In your case, the high amount of fatty alcohols, branched chains of the ascorbic ester, and highly branched squalane might in fact ‘kill’ the oil gelling of beeswax and push the mixture to something which follows rather the average melting point mentioned in the beginning.

You’ll have to try!

[Pharma]

@Abdullah Lower melting point, lower viscosity of NADES and often higher flexibility as hydrogen bond donor, hence easier for me to work with .

[Pharma]

Natural products have already a rather high batch to batch variability and an even higher one regarding provenance and production process.

Shea butter is a prime example for this. Traditionally, it’s obtained by mashing nuts, cooking them and, once cold, sifting off the floating fat. ‘Modern’ processing is often done by cold (or hot) pressing. The following refining steps/procedures which may be applied to either product are manifold. Bottom line is, there can be (and often is) a HUGE difference between different shea butters and even more so between organic unrefined and highly refined qualities. On the other hand, a quality shea butter pressed with modern equipment and such which is subsequently gently refined just to remove some impurities and discolouration may be fairly similar. These statements may be true for brand A but for brand B only today though not with next years harvest…

[Pharma]

Thanks for sharing @chemicalmatt and @Bill_Toge

Polyglyceryl-4 oleate? P-3 and P-4 oleate or P-3 olivate are on my wish list . Definitely going to try such a combo one day. Maybe I should start with polyglyceryl-3 palmitate which I have in stock and switch from glyceryl oleate to glyceryl palmitate… I wonder how strong the impact of the palmitate v.s. oleate side chain of these will be.

That you mention Arlacel 165 is a perfect coincidence :smiley: . Nice! @Graillotion: You reading this?

[Pharma]

If you’re going to incorporate glycerol you will have to use an emulsifier and PEG-40 HCO might actually work though you don’t need as much.

Replacing part of the paraffins with natural oils can be attempted, also hydrogenated peanut oil (partially hydrogenated and hence added at higher %, common pharmaceutical ingredient in Switzerland) or hydrogenated rapeseed oil may be used instead of HCO.

Example:

Beeswax: 0.5

Cetearyl alcohol: 1

Cetylpalmitate: 2

Emollients: ~10

Hydrogenated peanut oil: 20 (or hydrogenated rapeseed oil at 5-10)

Peanut oil (or other oils such as sunflower or almond): 20

Liquid paraffin: 20

Soft paraffin: 20

Other ingredients (emulsifiers, glycerol, water, preservatives etc.): the rest ad 100

If you add an emulsifier, your ointment may become self-emulsifying and/or easier to wash off. However, it may not be as occlusive as without.

You might try and add urea (which as to be ‘suspended’ = hard work) instead of glycerol and safe the emulsifier .

[Pharma]

Why do you grow animal cells in vitro to produce fat if you could simply plant trees? I know, this sounds like a comment of ‘one of those people’… For your information, I worked with maybe a dozen different animal and human cell lines during my PhD and post doc. Producing these cells, although some grew like crazy, was a very wasteful process and I have a hard time imagining how in vitro cultivation of animal cells could be environmentally friendly… I can imagine that it has a somewhat better carbon footprint than a swine or cow farm but why not grow some algae? Algae are great and you can keep them under less sterile in vitro conditions or just in some tanks using mineral fertilisers instead and light of a nutrient broth .

Two more questions:

Did prices finally drop for fully defined FBS-free media? 10 years back they were still super pricey.

Is your production GMO-free? My cell cultures including all materials either contained FBS and/or were crowded with GMO derived growth factors.

For those not familiar with FBS: This stands for Fetal Bovine Serum. It’s serum (the liquid stuff of blood) obtained from baby cows removed from the womb of freshly slaughtered cows shortly before calving. 20 years back it was nearly impossible to grow animal cells without that additive and first ‘fully synthetic’ replacements were slowly showing up. Still 10 years ago the replacement media were anything but easy on the budget (or nature).

Why should someone use animal fat in their product? That’s something done before (the good old days of stearate vanishing creams) so why now in a time where we have all those fancy sounding ‘rare’ oils from the Amazonian rainforest, highly spreading ester oils and even pure hydrocarbons from renewable resources?

BTW cosmetics is anything but environmentally friendly. It’s smearing stuff in your face which hungry people on this planet would love to eat. Seriously, cosmetics is kinda schizophrenic… maybe work on your marketing? Folks love for example the immortal stem cell story and basically buy overpriced in vitro apple juice, not because it’s good for the planet but because of immortality and because it’s fancy and new and expensive and hence must work miracles .

[Pharma]

Thanks for your input!

The 3-4 day ‘curing’ is interesting. I haven’t seen that mentioned, just the usual up to 2 days as with most lamellar structures. I have observed the ‘ripening’ of up to a week with several different trial formulations containing polyglyceryl esters and thought it weird and blamed the high amount of electrolytes/polyols/urea that I’ve added.

Guess soaping in my case is, if not caused by other ingredients, by a bit too high % of Tego Care PBS 6.

So far, Tego Care PBS 6 and Dermofeel NC strike me as quite tolerant and versatile emulsifiers which tend to give low viscosities… I’m trying to avoid polyacrylates and carbomers and that puts me in a less favourable situation regarding the envisaged higher viscosity. The worst was a combo of xanthan, guar and hyaluronic acid… like snail slime *urks*.

[Pharma]

Don’t know. Never ran them against each other.

I like to play with combinations especially with betaine & polyols or urea. Can’t comment further because I’m still in the middle of playing .

[Pharma]

IMHO sorbitol doesn’t last as long as glycerol but is less tacky. Can’t comment on the moisture performance.

I prefer xylitol over sorbitol but for other reasons than humectancy.

I usually work with dry/pure ingredients.

[Pharma]

Abdullah said:

@Pharma what is ky gel? 

KY is like WD-40: if screwing becomes more work than pleasure because the old hole is getting a bit rusty, real men use WD-40… KY is for pussies.

[Pharma]

Wetting agents: All soaps, all detergents, and most emulsifiers, and many solvents. ‘Good’ depends on the use.

Spreading: everything with a low viscosity and a high spreading value such as light ester oils, low molecular weight hydrocarbons, cyclic silicones, and many solvents.

Good penetration: KY gel :smiley:

[Pharma]

I suppose you’re making a minoxidil solution.

I don’t have the density of your mix and there is no reasonable way of calculating that just based on composition.

Best would be to simply mix the three ingredients and see what density you get.

1.2g or 1200 mg is 2% m/m of 60 g or 2% m/v of 60 ml although the latter is usually not used. Given that it doesn’t really matter because minoxidil solutions are usually applied at approximate amounts, adding 1.2 g (or 1200 mg if you prefer mg) would work as well if it’s for personal use.

[Pharma]

Spreading and penetration may be a result of wetting but that’s not their main effect. As their name implies, they wet stuff (other ingredients, surfaces etc.) by means of different modes of action. Usually, they are surface active and reduce surface tension and hence reduce contact angle.