Givaudan Active Beauty inaugurated today in Pomacle, France, its new Skin Expertise Technical Center designed to further accelerate cosmetic research and development projects.

This 100 square meters cutting-edge biology platform combines genomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, cell cul-ture and skin explants analysis, representing a CHF 0.5 million investment. It is fully dedicated to speed up the evaluation of the pipeline of ingredients arising from the four technology pillars of the company: blue and white biotechnologies, green technology and microbiome re-search.

Inspired from the pharmaceutical drug discovery model, this new Expertise Center is integrated in Givaudan Active Beauty’s entire discovery chain, offering high throughput screening (HTS) capabilities in order to identify and select more rapidly lead compounds with new biological activi-ties. It will allow designing new tests and screening meth-ods targeting strategic biological functions for the beauty of the skin, such as melanin synthesis, extracellular ma-trix components production, inflammatory cascades or detoxification pathways. Candidate compounds will be qualified on human cells and skin explants before being further evaluated in the company’s clinical assessment unit, to study their kinetic of action and their activity on volunteers versus placebo. This new scientific platform will also contribute to support the strategic R&D activity of the company on the human skin mi-crobiome in coordination with its metagenomics Expertise Center in Toulouse.

Laurent Bourdeau, Head of Active Beauty, said: “We are extremely proud to inaugurate this new Skin Ex-pertise Technical Center in Pomacle. It reveals our strong willingness to constantly extend and enhance our skills and experience in skin science to further bring added value to our customers. Our skin experts now get a new opportunity to increase the extent of their studies, for the crafting of tomorrow’s active ingredi-ents”.