CutiGuard CLR™: An anti-aging ingredient for youthful and resilient skin

The desire for youthfulness seems to be anchored in human history. As human beings, we have always tried to slow down or even reverse the aging process. Today, the key mechanisms behind the concept of longevity are not only relevant in the cosmetics industry but are also the focus of research.

In a world where people are living longer than ever, the question of how to stay healthy, active, and looking at their best for as long as possible is essential. Longevity is about maintaining youthful functionality and resilience over time, focusing on long-term health rather than just immediate results. We develop active ingredients with the aim to support skin in keeping or regaining its youthful functionality – a perfect match for longevity skincare.

We obtain inspiration from nature. On the one hand we see how some animal species, such as certain turtles and whales, can live seemingly forever while staying healthy. On the other we look at unicellular organisms, such as certain types of algae which can withstand extreme amounts of stress and still survive while staying fully functional. The knowledge we obtain from these perspectives is tremendous.

We see that these long-living animal species have great ways of keeping the number of senescent cells in their body as low as necessary. The ingenuity of the algae gives us important insights about how important it is for cells to be adaptive and flexible.

Although it is merited to consider cellular senescence in the skin, cellular senescence also has its beneficial purposes for the human body. It is therefore more intelligent to understand the processes which, biologically, lie upstream of cellular senescence. Here HMGB1, GATA4 and related p62 and selective autophagy play a central role. Only when a cosmetic active ingredient can balance these can visible skin aging be arrested and even reversed.

We try to provide our skin cells with the means to do exactly that. We have developed CutiGuard CLR™ for this purpose.

In its essence it is a hydrolyzed extract of the extremophile alga Galdieria sulphuraria. As its name suggests, Galdieria sulphuraria is a species which lives under extreme circumstances in and around volcanoes. It is exposed to constantly changing environments. At one point the acidity of the puddle of water it lives in can become very high, at another it is exposed to heavy metals and extremely high temperatures. It can survive these changing circumstances solely because it can constantly adapt.

This is exactly what skin cells need. As skin ages, its cells become less biologically flexible, making it harder for them to adapt to changing environments and stressors. This often leads to cellular senescence. CutiGuard CLR™, derived from Galdieria sulphuraria, helps skin cells become more resilient and adaptive. It supports them in regaining and maintaining their youthful functionality.

Absolutely. This is what we always aim for. Consumers today are well-informed and highly discerning. The science behind a cosmetic product is only relevant to them if the results are visible and tangible. Only then does an active ingredient truly make a difference. To achieve this, we want our cell biological results, the studies we do on skin cells, artificial skin and even explanted human skin to be confirmed in our studies on human volunteers.

We also strive to ensure that the effects observed in human volunteers align with their actual needs and expectations from a product. By treating consumers' original needs as the foundation of product development – rather than just the outcome of the process – we can ask entirely new questions and explore deeper insights.

CutiGuard CLR™ is a latest-generation longevity skincare active ingredient. It provides the skin cells with the means to maintain their youthful functionality and not go into senescence. We can substantiate this with studies.

What the consumer expects is for their skin to truly look more youthful and feel good. But what skin features make people look young? This is an essential question we need to answer. Making skin look younger is not just about reducing wrinkles and making skin taut. It is also about giving it an even and radiant complexion. Only if you cover the combination of these three does your skin maintain its radiance and youthful overall appearance. And that's exactly what CutiGuard CLR™ delivers.

Apart from applying the prevailing instrumental methods, we also elaborately used standardized photography in our studies. This allowed us to perform image analysis and look at every little detail concerning wrinkles and skin color evenness. CutiGuard CLR™ showed that it worked very well, and we could prove that it also works very quickly. But that wasn't enough for us.

To simulate the first impression a person makes, we conducted the first ever first impressions study. We asked more than 100 people to compare standardized photographs from before and after the treatment with CutiGuard CLR™ within just three seconds – with overwhelming results. This study clearly confirmed that it is even visible at first sight that CutiGuard CLR™ makes skin look younger and more attractive. In another study we asked renowned international makeup artists to deeply analyze the skin in the above-mentioned standardized photographs before and after the treatment with CutiGuard CLR™. In this study the results were even more overwhelming. The experts confirmed that the skin which had been treated looked clearly more radiant, youthful, flawless, even and balanced.

With this, we were able to comprehensively demonstrate that CutiGuard CLR™ makes the skin look visibly younger and more attractive for consumers, truly fulfilling our mission: to make a difference.

About Harald van der Hoeven Harald van der Hoeven holds a Master's degree in Organic Chemistry from the University Leiden, The Netherlands. He started to work in the personal care industry in 1999 where he specialized on R&D and the formulation of skincare and suncare cosmetics. In 2006 Harald joined CLR Berlin and took over as Director R&D, then changed to the position of Technical Marketing Director between May 2013 and August 2020, where he was responsible for technical and scientific support of CLR's customers and still heavily involved with CLR's R&D department. Harald focuses on basic science, including dermatology, cell biology, phytochemistry, biotechnology and cosmetic formulation technology and the application of this science, making it both usable for the cosmetic chemist and understandable for the consumer. Since September 2020 he has held the role of Director of Product Design and Development at CLR.

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