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Because you're worth it

Consumer power and legislation have spurred cosmetics firms to devise new ways to assess their products for safety. Welcome to the end of animal testing.

Test-tube (in vitro) methods involving reconstructed human skin are particularly promising. Episkin has even proved more reliable than traditional animal tests in assessing a substance’s potential for irritation. The tissue can be immersed for hours in whatever medium is to be tested—a body scrub, say—after which researchers use biomarkers to check for cells that have died off or become irritated. Episkin can also be made to resemble aged skin by exposing it to high doses of ultraviolet light. Or it can be treated with pigment cells, so-called melanocytes, that give it that golden-brown colour so sought after by sunbathers.

Donor cells come from people of a range of ethnic backgrounds, so technicians can cultivate a whole spectrum of tones, allowing the experts to examine the efficiency of sunscreen, for example, on various skin types. And since Episkin has proved to be a success in epidermal tests, the search is on for procedures that can be used for other types of human tissue.

If the thought of human skin in a petri dish makes you leery, computer simulation can also predict the physiological effects of a substance, based on its chemical composition, preventing the need for in vitro tests altogether. These so-called in silico programs create detailed simulations of chemical interactions inside a computer, based on the results of actual tests.

Researchers at the German consumer-goods manufacturer Henkel, at which cosmetics-and-toiletries sales amounted to $4.2 million, have fed the experimental and toxicological data from raw material tests into (Quantitative) Structure Activity Relationship, or (Q)SAR, software. (Q)SAR could conduct a virtual experiment of its own using that data, and worked out the likelihood that an ingredient would cause, say, skin sensitization. With that kind of information, product designers can decide whether a new formulation is worth the effort and investment of further development—without ever touching a rabbit.

“We gain a lot through our activities in this field,” says Patricia Pineau, scientific director at L’Oréal, “most of all by increasing our acceptance by consumers concerned for animal welfare.”

There are other profits too. According to Thomas Hartung, head of the European Centre for the Validation of Alternative Methods (ECVAM), “Many companies are interested in participating at an early stage because they will be able to use their innovative methodologies for predictive testing, agent discovery and agent profiling even before the tests become mandatory. They promise higher throughput, lower costs and better public acceptance—and thus offer real market advantages.” Indeed, the European Commission estimates that the introduction of the new procedures could result in savings of up to $1.6 billion.

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