Drone Technology in Skincare is here

It amazes me how skincare has changed and improved so quickly over recent years. In a relatively short period of time, skin care formulations have been elevated from basic oil-in-water and water-in-oil emulsions, to complex concoctions with great active ingredients.

New and effective ingredients are constantly being discovered, but the challenge for scientists is how to deliver those ingredients into the skin where they are needed. Take for instance Vitamin C and Retinol; both are highly effective skin care actives,  but unless they are in a product that has been formulated to enable them to enter the skin they won’t be able to work their magic. It doesn’t matter how high the concentration of an active ingredient is either, you will just have more of it sitting on the surface of your skin.

So, the challenge for cosmetic scientists is how to get these great active skin care ingredients to penetrate the skin and get them to where they need to be once inside.  The outermost layer of your skin is called the ‘stratum corneum’ it is basically a protective barrier with a few entry points – the pores, hair follicles and the spaces in-between cells which contain and oil/water fluid. So this is a big challenge, to get a product to penetrate a membrane whose function is a protective one.

At present there are around four technologies that are assisting in getting active ingredients through the skin’s barrier and the latest is ‘drone technology’. Cosmetic drone technology is a method of not only penetrating the skins protective barrier but to deliver those active ingredients directly to certain cells and in some cases even a precise area of that cell. One of the drone technologies are ‘ligand peptides’ which can bind to a site of a specific protein signalling the encapsulated ingredient to enter the cell and release it exactly where it needs to be. Clever!? There are other drone technologies but rather than ‘droning’ on about them (excuse the pun) I am sure you would prefer to know what the benefits are for your skin.

One of the great things about this technology is that the active ingredients target the cells where they are needed without affecting any surrounding skin. This means that potentially-irritating ingredients like retinol and vitamin C can be used in lower concentrations, so you no longer need to look for high percentages of active ingredients in skin care products. With drone technology less definitely means more.

We have introduced our first, of probably what will be many, skin care products using drone technology in our beauty salon in Tarporley and also the beauty salon in Ellesmere Port. It comes in the form of Dermalogica’s Prisma Protect which delivers active ingredients to improve the skins luminosity via drone technology. If you would like to try it pop in and experience it in one of Skin Solver Treatments which, by the way are complimentary with your Treatcard points and when you purchase your Dermalogica skincare products with us.

Originally published March 5, 2019