More than 300 attendees gathered in Arlington, VA in late October for the Personal Care Products Council’s annual Science Symposium & Expo.

Here are some lecture highlights from this multi-day event that draws experts in formulation, testing and more. 

Andress Johnson, technical service manager, Thor Specialties, a Connecticut-based manufacturer, spoke about the microbial challenges of environmental isolates in the cosmetic industry. Microbial contamination reportedly remains a significant concern in the cosmetic industry, with environmental isolates posing persistent and complex challenges. Between 2011 and 2023, the US Food and Drug Administration received more than 400 adverse event reports related to cosmetics, 76.8% of which were associated with microbial contamination.  

Johnson said cosmetic recalls can cost between an estimated $3 to $72 million, per a study by Science Direct. In addition to monetary burdens, other ramifications include brand damage, bad press, removal of product, investigation, disposal of products, plant deep clean, replacement of product, loss of sales, risk to consumers and lawsuits.

Unilever’s Dr. Samantha Samaras, senior vice president, personal care science and technology and clinicals, shed light on the microbial ecosystem of the microbiome. She analogized the microbiome to a neighborhood. 

“They like being where they live because they like the food, they like the temperatures, the oxygen amount,” Samaras said. “So, the bugs that live in your underarm, they like lack of oxygen, they like oily secretions, they don’t like sunlight very much. The bugs that live on our face are kind of the opposite, because they’re exposed to the sun. They do have some oily secretions, but not as much. And when you age, that changes. This understanding of the microbial ecosystem really becomes the underpinning of how we enhance or support the microbiome, not remove it, or fundamentally change it, in driving health and well-being.”  

Product personalization depends on a cohort, which includes factors like age, skin type, geography, skin sensitivity. 

“We weren’t always able to measure with that level of precision,” Samaras added. “The advent of technology to measure the microbiome and of course, the advent of being able to use AI to understand it in a way we never could before really has changed our ability to understand cohorts.”

Samaras said aging, acne, dryness and environmental inputs influence how skin reacts. While the complexity of the microbial ecosystem was long misunderstood, the amount of information available using AI models has opened a world of innovation. 

The microbiome, she added, is an indispensable barrier for maintaining skin hydration. The skin microbiome supports hydration by producing lactic acid, glycerol, PPAR activators, barrier “prolipids” and pro-ceramides. Dry skin has a weaker microbiome and fewer lipids and is less resilient and less connected. Moisturizing products can support microbiome balance and skin lipids and provide that “food” so the skin can make what it needs. Delayed agers have a more robust network of microbiome on the face than premature agers. But there is hope in restoration. Topical retinoid technologies, like Pond’s Hexyl-Retinol, are clinically proven to restore premature aging with continued use.

“If you use a known, dermatologically gold standard technology, like a retinoid, what you see is a return of that microbiome network in treatment,” she said. 

AI continues to be a hot topic. Dr. Samiul Amin, University of Miami, lectured on accelerated product design for safer and eco-friendly consumer products through expert formulation science guided AI/machine learning. He introduced FastFormulator, a software platform that turns lab data into AI that predicts which formulations will hit target specs before a batch is mixed. The software purports to take months of trial-and-error to ranked formulations in a matter of days. It’s built for R&D teams who need results quickly and business leaders who need confidence in the plan.

The platform, he said, would help formulators save costs, several months in getting the product to market and engineering rework, referring to imprecise blends that require redesigns. The platform also gives formulators a strategic advantage by eliminating the time spent on manual reformulations. 

“This replacement, even just one component, is very intensive,” he said. “Instead of manually doing these doing hundreds of formulations and getting to see which combinations gets you the best surface tension or gives you the best viscosity, [Fast Formulator] can predict that without actually stepping into the lab.” 

Anne Marie Api, president of Research Institute for Fragrance Materials (RIFM), spoke about the critical role of exposure data in fragrance safety assessment. She said overestimation in exposure assessments decreases as the exposure models become more realistic. 

She said RIFM moved from a deterministic model to a probabilistic model. 

“One of the things that we face in the fragrance industry is that the nose is a very sensitive instrument and we can detect odors in very low levels in parts per billion,” said Api. “We’re also fortunate in the fragrance industry that you only need a very small amount of fragrance ingredient to be effective, to impart an odor. We know that the safe use level is very large. So, we have very large margins of safety, which makes the fragrance safety assessment unique from others.” 

When RIFM moved to a probabilistic model, it partnered with Crème Global, an established partner to industry in modeling exposure for cosmetics and foods. The Crème-RIFM model calculates the aggregate exposure to fragrance ingredients from consumer products. It includes personal care, cosmetics, household care and air care products.  

“What makes the model so powerful is that it’s flexible and its customizable,” Api noted. “It plays a very strategic role in the RIFM safety assessment. Because you cannot do a risk assessment without knowledge of exposure, this model is the most comprehensive of its kind.” 

The data from RIFM’s fragrance ingredients comes from information on how much of the fragrance ingredient is used in the fragrance mixture from the fragrance manufacturers. Data is updated every five years. The model, she said, combines fragrance concentration with habits and practices data to calculate population exposure. 

“We take the information on how much of the fragrance ingredient is used in the mixture and then we take the information on how much of the mixture is used in the final product,” she explained. “Then, we take habits and practices data of where they use products and how much they use; that gets combined into the model.”

It has run “hundreds of thousands” of times and produces an aggregate exposure for RIFM. 

“Since it’s a population-based exposure, we can provide different percentile values. At RIFM, we look at the 95% exposure. The loyal consumer, or the super user—that individual that loves that rose fragrance and uses it from early in the morning to late a night—that is the person we want to protect.”

Regulatory agencies look at the 90th or 95th percentile exposure, she said. “We know exposure to products is very low, and its many orders of magnitude below the threshold of toxicological concern.”  

More news from PCPC’s Annual Scientific Symposium can be found here.