Mathias Gempeler

Global Head Science & Promotion Skin Care | DSM Nutritional Products | Personal Care Basel | Switzerland

When I came to the cosmetics industry from the pharmaceutical industry almost 20 years ago, the first synthetic peptides were just starting to appear on the market. New in cosmetics at the time, this technology has had a great influence over the past two decades, together with the steady increase in knowledge about skin physiology and biotechnology more generally. Of course, time does not stand still, but things have continued to progress step by step rather than making a single great leap forward. In my opinion, this has now changed. Two years ago, the skin microbiota or skin microbiome was simply one topic among many and received only marginal attention. During the last two years things have changed drastically. Indicators related to innovations such as the numbers of scientific papers published on the topic per year (>300) and patents are confirming a rising interest in the field of microbiome related cosmetics. You don’t have to look into a crystal ball to see that this will be a major area of interest at the upcoming in-cosmetics in Barcelona. But what’s changed? The subject in and of itself is far from new. Sometime around 1680 Anthony van Leeuwenhoek first used a m ...