RE: 2023 Will Be The Year Of The Skin’s Microbiome
The micro biome is not so much about the living organisms on the surface of our skin, but it is also about extracting, for example, the enzymes that are responsible for their activities that help our skin flourish, and remain healthy. I think that there is a misconception in not only the beauty industry, but also the science community that impacts beauty, wellness and health industries. The micro biome is an incredibly complex culmination of various fields of study, and involves many subdisciplines, such as immunology, toxicology, microbiology, virology, proteomics, genomics, and many chemical reactions that we still have yet to understand.
Basically, it is really crucial now, more than ever, to start understanding what makes bacteria so helpful for our skin. Is it the fact that they live together on our skin and contribute in a colony or population format? Or is it, that they secrete certain factors, or enzymes that facilitate the lysing, or breaking of naturally occurring compounds found in the skin barrier, as well as the breakdown of any metabolites from skin cells? (Or something else entirely)
Not to mention that we aren’t just talking Bacteria here. The skin’s micro BIOME equates to all micro ORGANISMS on the surface (I.e. fungi, viruses, other stuff like spores, etc)
To understand anything in the field of science, much less something as complex as science on a micro level, we must stick to the tried, and true bench research methods that have been utilized for decades to understand aspects such as gene expression, protein expression, and also the interactions between them. These are complex studies and also very time consuming. Therefore, it is interesting to evaluate the world of Microbiome over the counter products from a business standpoint, or, rather, I should say, economical standpoint. In other words, it would be very expensive for a brand to not only figure out what the real methodology is behind why bacteria are so helpful for our skin, skin barrier, as well as overall metabolism.
Now, when it comes to the idea of isolating something of value from any of the organisms that compromise the Microbiome of most individuals, there are several hurdles in terms of R&D, but more practically, the application of the new biotechnology.
Application is genuinely the largest hurdle that we face as an industry. In true practicality of principles outlined above, we simply don’t know how to apply this technology efficiently in a topical system yet.
Also, just gonna mention that as we all know: no one’s Microbiome is the same and so most likely this will need to be an individualized experience for consumers and not something we can create on mass scale levels. Small batches would be key!
In conclusion, do I think the Microbiome is an area worth investing in for the new year? Yea absolutely! The more money we can pour into this field , the better. Heck, I say we work to somehow get the NIH more involved as a collective medical community backed by the leading executives of the multi billion dollar otc companies.
Excited to see what’s coming next.
Thanks for reading,
Dr Ekta Y
MD MBA MS
For Further Reading:
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1260144
Acknowledgement: Larry Weiss (Founder of Symbiome)
