Profour: Taking Antioxidants to the Next Level

Antioxidants have become a vital ingredient in personal care products due to their great anti-inflammatory and anti-aging properties; however, they are challenging to formulate, resulting in inactive consumer products with limited antioxidant benefits, or products that cause irritation by administering too high of concentrations to the skin over short periods of time. Four unresolved challenges with formulating with antioxidants are the instability of the ingredients, the limited window of activity, the lack of control in the amount delivered, and the low loading capacities of current delivery strategies. With these challenges in mind, BGA Skincare built the PROfour platform. PROfour is a novel delivery system that uniquely solves the problems associated with formulating any hydroxyl-containing active into skincare products. With a patented poly(beta-amino ester) technology, BGA Skincare can protect the activity of the ingredient by utilizing Michael addition chemistry and prolong its availability by delivering the ingredients for extended incremental time periods. The technology can also be programmed using tunable starting material parameters to achieve release profiles from 3-24 hours, and ultimately provide superior active loading capacities by incorporating the ingredient into the backbone of the polymer to achieve up to 5x greater loading capacities than other strategies currently on the market. PROfour will allow skincare products to fully capitalize on the known benefits of antioxidants, providing the full potential of the active to the consumer.