Shiseido develops technology to measure ingredient permeation on the skin

The technology was applied to evaluate the state of permeation into the skin of "4MSK", an effective whitening ingredient originally developed by Shiseido.

Looking ahead, the cosmetics company aims to apply this technology in cosmetics development, including developing cosmetic products with even stronger permeation strength, as well as research on the route and amount of active ingredients permeating into the skin.

Up until now, the most common method of visualizing the permeation state has been to permeate active ingredients on a part of the skin which can be surgically removed and observe cross sections using a fluorescence microscope.

Development​

The Tokyo-headquartered firm initially focused on "tape stripping," which has been a common evaluation analysis method that has previously been established, and DESI-MSI, a recently developed mass spectrometry method that is able to quantitatively measure two-dimensional distribution of a number of ingredients simultaneously.

Shiseido also developed a technology for quantitative and clear visual display in terms of depth direction by using multiple 2D distribution data collected via DESI-MSI using a newly devised patent-pending data processing method.

However, this cross-sectional visual display developed at this time provides approximated images via data processing that combines planar images.

Analyze multiple ingredients​

A significant feature of the newly developed measuring method (DESI-MSI) is that it can analyze multiple ingredients at the same time in a single measurement process.

Therefore, for research on the permeation state of cosmetics ingredients in the skin, this makes it possible to simultaneously analyze aspects that include other formulated ingredients and the relationship with constituents in the skin.

This technology has been applied as a method to evaluate the permeation strength of "4MSK", an effective whitening ingredient in Shiseido White Lucent Power Brightening Mask (to be released from February 1, 2013 onward).