What is “Longevity Skincare?” OneSkin Co-Founder Carolina Reis Oliveira on How-to Extend the Life of Your Skin, Peptides Vs. Retinol and The “Healthspan” Habits She Practices Herself

0:00The following podcast is a dear media production.

0:07Welcome to Breaking Beauty, the podcast all about the breakthrough people, products, and moments in beauty. We're your hosts, Jill Dunn and Carleen Higgins.

0:20Hello and welcome back to Breaking Beauty podcast, the podcast all about the breakthrough people, products, and moments in beauty. I'm your co-host, Carleen Higgins, and I'm here with my work wife for life, Jill Dunn. Hey, Carlene. And can I just say happy early Women's Day? You know, it's coming up this weekend. Yes. I love how many amazing women that we talk to on this podcast. It's always an inspiration. And this week we are so pleased to be chatting all about this Future is Now skincare brand called One Skin. You might've seen it all over your Instagram feed. That's where I first discovered it.

0:54And this brand is actually created by four female scientists. And I'm pleased to let you know that this uninterrupted conversation is brought to you in partnership with OneSkin. Our guest today is Carolina Reyes-Olivera, PhD and OneSkin co-founder and CEO. Carolina has earned degrees in stem cell biology and tissue engineering with a doctorate in immunology. In 2016, she co-founded OneSkin, where she and her team spearhead research and development, creating molecules that target cellular aging, including their pioneering innovation, the OSO1 peptide. Yes, we're going to be learning all about the groundbreaking technology as we explore the topic of longevity.

1:39I can't get enough of this topic. And that's really just all about delaying the onset of age-related inflammation and diseases by targeting aging itself. And we're going to be discussing how you can foster longevity in the skin. And we're also going to be chatting about how we can expand our health span through the smartest longevity habits that Carolina practices herself. And as always, you can find everything we discuss at BreakingBeautyPodcast.com. And if you want to learn more and try One Skin for yourself, you can visit oneskin.co slash beauty and use code beauty at checkout for 15 % off your first purchase.

2:25Welcome to Breaking Beauty Podcast, Carolina. So just days after this episode goes to air, it will be International Women's Day. I mean, I'm still on the team of making 365 days a year International Women's Day, but we'll take this day. Okay. So prior to founding OneSkin, you co-founded a Brazilian biotech startup that produced human cells from stem cells. And this is, I feel like, the kind of technology that makes waves and that people are kind of, you know, looking to invest in. We see big players like L 'Oreal do this. So what can you tell us about that background and how it's helped inform what you're doing now?

3:04So we're all researching stem cell biology, tissue engineering. And one of the applications of this research is basically to grow human tissues in the lab. So you can test new products or new drugs and evaluate both like toxicity and safety. And it's a very advanced technology that unfortunately we didn't find a lot of demand in Brazil from the market. But we did find more traction from the cosmetic industry. And as you well pointed, L 'Oreal has been doing this for maybe over 20, 30 years. But very few companies have this knowledge of like growing skins and using this skin, you know, in vitro or synthetic skins, whatever you want to call, to test their products.

3:57And we saw that the more cosmetic companies want to use this model because obviously you should not test in animals. And it is the best way to predict how a product will perform in humans. And clinical studies, human studies are always more expensive. So if you're able to validate this in the lab and get some insights if your product's on the right kind of direction in terms of the benefits or what do you expect, that's like a huge help for any, you know, cosmetic company. So that's how we end up like focusing more on the cosmetic industry. And that's when we got the opportunity to come to the U.S.

4:41in 2016. And here in San Francisco, we found this accelerator that basically helped like scientists to become entrepreneurs. So they coach like scientists how to start a company and build like a sustainable business. Wow. So that's, yeah, so that's why I came to the U.S. in 2016. And then Alessandra, my other co-founder, joined me later. The other two stayed in Brazil. But that's how we could keep this dream alive of like, you know, translating the science and finding the right resources to carry forward. And yeah, and that's how we actually started the One Skin. So one skin came as an evolution of this first company based on this, where we saw like a market opportunity and we could utilize our expertise to address that market need.

5:37Yeah, I remember being at a L 'Oreal event and seeing the grown skin as it were in a petri dish. Yeah, I was there with you, Jill. We had our lab coats on. I know. Yes, that was here, but it looks very real. Yeah. And if you come to One Skin Lab, you can also see that. Yeah. It's amazing. It's amazing. That was a real epiphany for me seeing that because I think for so long, not to get too much into L 'Oreal, but so many people just assumed that they were testing on animals because they're such a large conglomerate company. but in fact they had you know this similar reach research to what you were doing and they just bought it out they were like they just brought it in house you know so they've been doing that for a very long time so that but that's amazing this i love this idea of like innovation and entrepreneurship among among scientists it actually helps to kind of democratize so other people have access as well and and it's interesting what you were saying about the the incubator that, you know, you can definitely see this rise in science backed skincare and, you know, who knows what could be next.

6:48One of the things when I was doing research on OneSkin that really stood out to me, of course, I was reading the entire website. You have an extensive blog, by the way, on longevity, but it says our journey began with a simple question. Are any of the so-called anti-aging products on the market actually effective? To our surprise, most didn't promote real rejuvenation and evaluating them in the lab, we discovered some were even harmful at the cellular level. So tell us what that means more specifically, which ingredients would you personally never apply? Yeah, so that was very interesting in the beginning of our journey.

7:30We came up with this hypothesis. Okay, everyone is interested in anti-aging. Are the products out there actually rejuvenating the skin. And one of the things that we could do to measure this rejuvenation effect is to measure what we call the skin's biological age. What we say like, okay, how functional this skin is, how healthy is the skin, more so than the chronological age of the skin. We all have our own biological age that's different from our chronological age and is largely influenced by our lifestyles and habits. So what we could do, we grow a skin in the lab. We can measure, hey, by reading the DNA of the skin, we can say this skin is like four years old.

8:15And then we can test any product and we can measure if a given product would reduce the age to 37 or maybe would accelerate the age of the skin. So we started testing products and very fast what we found as you said that most products could not reduce the age of the skin some of them could make your skin you know a little thicker in terms of the epidermal barrier but they were the age of the skin they were not actually reducing the age and some of them were accelerating the age and and what and what we saw is that these ones that were accelerating the age, like we could see from a histology analysis, basically like a tissue transversal kind of section of the skin, that the cells started like basically to degenerate.

9:10We saw a lot of inflammation happening and the epidermal or the skin barrier that should be thicker was getting thinner. So visually, and I can show you both of the histologists, it's very clear what is like a beautiful, healthy skin and what is skin that's, you know, being affected by the toxicity of some ingredients. It's hard for me to name like specific ingredients. I was going to say, name them. Name them. We need to know. Yeah. I mean, there are some products of some brands that we test it consistently and they produce this kind of toxic effect. and some are like the best selling in anti-aging, but like the old school brands.

9:55Okay. Well, you don't have to name the brands, but are there certain ingredients that you would never apply because you actually think that it's doing more harm than good? Yeah. So in the end, it's a combination of like the ingredients, the concentrations. And so for example, there are certain preservatives that are like not as, I would say safe for the skin that, you know, obviously we know fragrances, some essential oils. For me, again, evaluating specific ingredients, it's a little hard. What we usually do is partner with other companies that do this job of like really evaluating the concentration of certain ingredients and basically claiming if the product is safe or not safe.

10:48Like we work with other companies like the Skin Safe Products that basically evaluate the concentration of heavy metals, things like that, that can actually, you know, cause some toxicity. And we were also approved by the National Eczema Foundation. and there are other EWG is one that you can look more on the ingredient level. It's not, none of them are perfect. Some, you know, obviously some people criticize. But I think for us, a lot of times we see a correlation of some of those products that are claimed not safe from those institutions. and when we test in the lab, we see that the skin is actually being affected by the toxicity.

11:37And even, you know, Sephora has like the clean ingredients list. This is already a good, I would say, guidance. So I know that's hard for the consumer. We can, you know, validate this in the lab, but I would use those sources as a guidance. I would say that in the end, it's all, you know, then those makes the poison. So it sounds like it's more about the recipe of how the ingredients are put together or the formula is put together versus one bad guy ingredient. Exactly. And that's when things get really tricky. And I can give you an example. When we are developing a formula, we have our hero ingredient, that's our peptide that we're going to talk about.

12:21But then we start adding new ingredients and we we add like one two and we're testing these skins and a lot of times like those two don't combine necessarily well with like our peptide so to find synergy it's really hard a lot of times when you add more active ingredients they are basically like neutralizing itself and if you add too many actives you can kind of over cause some overreaction on your skin so that's to me when it gets really tricky for formulators out there that have not don't have like these models to validate if all of those actors that active that are they are adding is actually bringing more benefits or if eventually they are you know just potentially causing harm because it's too many of them and i think we have seen this in the market with like it's schemes that are, you know, everyone is getting more sensitive because people are overloading their skin with too many products.

13:28And, and then people end up like, yeah, not having like a healthy barrier. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about a rising buzzword, senescence. Now, the first time I heard this word was at a Chanel event in Paris. It was about a year ago. And that's when I learned that all, you know, a lot of skincare scientists at very prestigious universities are currently studying senescence. And that's something we're starting to hear more about in the lexicon of skincare. So in layperson's terms, can you explain what senescence means? Yes. So senescence comes from like the word senil, that means old. So a senescent cells means like an old cell.

14:16And usually a cell has like mainly three fates. Like this cell will divide and usually divides like around 50 times. And eventually when it reaches like this, what we call like a limit in terms of divisions, because the cells are, it's already very damaged. The cells should die and that, or our body should basically reabsorb this cell because it's not functioning anymore. or some of the cells enter in this senescent state that they can escape this death pathway and they can linger around. And when they become senescent, basically what happens is that they are not functional anymore. So in the skin, for example, they are not producing collagen.

15:05They are not proliferated. They don't divide anymore. and on the flip side what also happens is that they start secreting inflammation and the inflammation that's coming from this you know we also call them zombie cells because they are in this state like half dead half alive this inflammation that they secrete induce the cells around to become senescent as well to age faster so in the end we like to compare this senescent cell with like a rotten apple in a bunch, you know, that senescent cells is spoiling the good cells around. And that is what accelerates aging and causes like the signs of aging, the tissue dysfunction.

15:52And in the skin, the more senescent cells that we have, the more fine lines, wrinkles, sagging, and, you know, pigmentation issues we have. so what was the hypothesis if we can reduce the load of these old cells in the skin then we can make room for the healthy cells that are there to proliferate produce more collagen restore your your barrier and that's a targeted way to address aging because we are only affecting the bad cells We are not disrupting the good cells. And that's a different approach than retinol and other acids work because retinol basically works by inducing cell renews. So basically, you know, remove the upper layers of your skin.

16:45The good and the bad cells are being renewed. but the senescent cells are still there in the dermal layer, meaning that it's still driving aging underneath. So it can promote like a better skin appearance in the short term because you're basically growing a fresher, newer skin, but it's not addressing the cause, what's continued to spread the inflammation inside the skin. So it's like killing the zombie cells. Yeah, it's almost like a detox. Right. Yeah, exactly. And our body is able to do this when we are young and even like process like autophagy. No fasting is a good way that you can induce your body to recycle your old cells, your old proteins.

17:33But if you can help your own skin with like, you know, additional help to do this recycling process, that's like the best way that you maintain your skin healthy, younger, functional. Right. Amazing. I've learned something. Carolina, you studied more than 900 peptides over five years to develop your key ingredient. So can you explain how a peptide can have this effect and what makes the peptide that you use so special in the field of in the pool of 900. Yeah. Interesting enough about these zombie cells, they don't only accumulate in our skin, they accumulate in our whole body. And for example, they accumulate in our joints and they are associated with like osteoarthritis.

18:24So what we saw in, you know, in the longevity field back in 2016, when we started One Skin is that several companies were trying to decrease the amount of these aging cells, zombie cells in different tissues to prevent or address aging-related diseases. And we thought, okay, why no one is trying to use this approach to reduce these zombie cells in the skin to prevent the skin aging? That's when we decided to research new peptides that would have this impact, specifically reducing the load of these aging cells in our skin. So we tested these 900s and basically we applied, you know, 900 peptides.

19:11And this took us like four years. It's a very extensive, you know, research process in contact with these, you know, old cells, senescent cells. And we measured which peptide would have the greatest effect in reducing the amount of those aging cells. And OS1 was the one that outperformed all of them. So OS1 basically reduces around 40 % of the load of these aging cells in the skin, up to 40%. It varies. And what it does internally, again, allows the healthy ones to replicate. It induces collagen production to a similar level than retinol does. But it does not induce any inflammation. it actually reduces inflammation.

20:01So we measure a lot of like inflammatory markers, for example, IL-6, IL-8, IL-1. And we see that these levels are reduced. And we also measure like aging genes. And we also see that these aging genes are being downregulated. So it's a very interesting result to show that, okay, by having fewer old cells, We are now like down-regulating aging, down-regulating inflammation, and we are up-regulating collagen, hyaluronic acid. And again, naturally, you're going to have like a better looking skin. But just because we are addressing the main cause of this aging process. And the last piece that I'll share in terms of like, we measure the age reduction and we could see that we reduce the age in 2.5 years.

20:56by treating the skin with this peptide. And this was in a lab study, so it was over five days. It's obviously a very controlled condition, but it is the first time that a molecule is measured to be able to reduce the age of the skin. And even retinol was not yet validated, at least from this standpoint analysis of measuring the molecular age to be able to reduce the age of the skin, which is very exciting. I think it shows that, yes, aging is malleable. And if you know where you can intervene, you can actually achieve that biologically younger skin. Yeah. So the skin that you were testing on, are you able to engineer it in such a way that it starts out at 45 years old and then at the end, you're like oh it's 43 or yeah so for this experiment we used actually biopsies from older individuals so these ones that we used were actually like 75 years old and after or 71 actually this is published in our peer-reviewed journal it's available on our website so at the 71 year old skin after the treatment was like 68.5.

22:20So we could measure this using an algorithm that you know we also published and basically quantifies this molecular age.

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23:29Now, peptides have been around for a long time. We've heard of this ingredient, skincare, I mean, since I was a baby beauty editor. but it has become more buzzy of late. So as a consumer, other than just buying one skin, like whether it's a legit formula or not, you know? Yeah, I would say, I mean, there is a ton of peptides out there. And for those, I imagine most of your audience knows, but like for those who don't, doesn't know, peptide is this small chain of amino acids. So it's the building blocks of a protein. and the way that they can work in products like cosmetics, they can function as a messenger.

24:11So they can get inside the cell or the skin and they can activate the cell to behave in a certain way. In our case, for example, our peptide induces like DNA repair pathways and other pathways that are going to reduce inflammation and so forth. So I think the difference is compared to our peptide and others out there. I think for a lot of the peptides out there, you need to understand, first, are they going to penetrate the skin? Depending on the size of this peptide, they may not even get into the skin. Second, is the peptide stable? Can the peptide be active after long periods inside the product, on the shelf, different temperatures, different pHs?

24:57age. And the only way that I think you can know that is saying like, okay, is there any research available? Can you ask like the brands, even if they don't have published on their website, because most don't, maybe, you know, email them and ask, hey, do you have any data showing the efficacy of this peptide? And most of them, I would say, you share the information from their suppliers. But when you add the peptide inside the formula, again, you need to test it again because you need to see if in that specific formula, if the peptide is going to continue to be active after a certain period of time.

25:40So I don't know if I'm helping, but I think the best way is to go to the website and hopefully try to see some data, some research. And if they don't have, you know, try to ask, email them directly. Well, before we move on, I need to ask you about the body topical supplement, which has been served to me in an Instagram ad. And the person who is, it's like a before and after. And it's one of those things where it slides over. And Carleen and I, I think you saw it as well. Carleen? Yeah. I hit the DMs. I sent it to Jill and I was like, is this real life? Because on the one side, it's so crepey and wrinkly.

26:18It looks like my mom's arm. No offense to anyone, but it does look like the woman's arm is, you know, probably like 80 or something like that, like very creepy. And then the thing slides and it's like, yeah, you know, and then it slides over and it looks like my arm. And I'm like, excuse me. And I said, I was like, is this real? I know. And we can share because she posted. So this she is a mom of an influencer. And basically this influencer was doing a review of their products. So I think it was 2024. And they both were sharing like kind of organically, like which products are, you know, it's working for you.

26:58And her mom basically, you know, shared this before and after. And she's like 65. And I was also very shocked, like, with the difference. And we have seen with the body similar results in terms of like helping crepe skin. and it's basically and it's also after four five months of treatment so it's it's not nothing something that you you can overnight overnight right right but the body lotion people are obsessed and mainly people that are going through this menopause phase that your skin is starting to get like more thin and crepey again it contains the peptide it has a lot of ceramides and it has other ingredients that can help with like the skin thickness the epidermal layer we have many a lot of data showing that improve the thickness of the epiderms and improve the barrier of the skin and it's a beautiful lotion because again absorbs really well it's very hydrating and it's not greasy at all so yeah i saw that picture and i was like i'm putting it on my face yes i mean I'll put it all over my body, but I'm also putting it on my face.

28:15What's next from the brand? What's around the corner? Can you tell us? So, I mean, there are so many exciting things coming up. This year, we have like three exciting launch. Unfortunately, I cannot share them yet. But I, yeah, we have been doing so much research. There is a new category that we are really excited to bring to our community. Yeah, it's coming, it's coming. All right. Well, keep us on your mailing list. Yes. We need to talk to you a little bit about some of your brand positioning and how you've, you know, identified yourselves, which is as longevity scientists. And we know that this is just a huge term in terms of where we're going and not just skincare, but healthcare and tech and all kinds of things.

29:06So given that you've studied this, and this is the whole idea to be clear about the quest for extending a person's health span, you've studied immunity, you're into this concept of longevity. What do you think legitimately could be just around the corner for us as a human race? I study stem cell biology and one of the areas that I really think that's exciting right now, it's like PRPs or platelet-rich plasma that you can, if you have like a healthy, you know, organism. and so PRP basically means that you draw your blood, you spin it down and the plasma that's rich like in growth factors, you can inject in a certain area that you need to promote healing.

29:56So for example, I have some knee kind of injury and then I did a red light PRP injections in my knees and that helps like speed up like the healing process and you could do the same with stem cells. the stem cells, it's not as simple as just drawing your blood. And in the U.S., it's still not very accepted in clinics. So some people go out of the country to do those treatments. But we know that stem cells have this power of secreting a lot of anti-inflammatory and regenerative factors. so I think this is very fascinating that we can already start using this today and I don't think many people know about that right how many people you know around your you know yourself that has trouble like with like movements right like they they cannot and and these are things that we should be able to avoid if we start like preventing those injuries early on.

31:05Other technologies that I think it's interesting is about either cancer detection that early on or like the full body MRI. Totally agree. Yeah. So these are things that are more on the preventative side that, But OK, some of them are still expensive, but all of them are getting more accessible in terms of, you know, being available to regular customers. I think understanding your biological markers in a deeper way. You know, there are many companies that are evaluating this today. So you draw your blood and you assess like 100 biomarkers and you can get already insights. So I think this is the near term benefits that we already seen from the longevity kind of research.