Fully-biodegradable and skin-friendly beauty masks

The majority of these new dressings, based on the use of natural, biodegradable, environmentally- and skin-friendly polymers, opened new windows for optimising the skin reparative processes, modulating the skin microbioma5 and the epidermal cellular turnover by a slowrelease of active ingredients. Thus a global skin regeneration is promoted.6–8 

The natural fibres used to make these new dressings seem to be able to modulate the skin inflammatory conditions, acting also as regulators of both the epidermal lipids synthesis and extracellular matrix (ECM) organisation.9–11 Among these fibres, chitin nanofibrils (CNs), extracted from crustacean waste, industrially produced by our group by a low water and energy consumption process, seem useful to modulate the exuberant wound healing and premature skin ageing during the re-epithelialisation and regeneration processes.12,13 

CNs, in fact, seem able to normalise the barrier function, regulating the cytokines cascade and the synthesis of both lamellae and collagen14–16. CNs are catabolised by chitotriosidase enzymes, present both in the environment and into the human body17 to produce glucosamine and acetyl glucosamine. These glucoside-derived molecules are the main components of glycosaminoglycans and proteoglycans, necessary for the glycosilation processes. Thus CNs having the same structure of ECM may be used also to produce nonwoven tissues18 characterised by their capability to facilitate cellular adhesion and skin cell proliferation. Additionally, due to their electropositive character, CNs have been complexed with the electronegative lignin, to obtain block co-polymeric nanoparticles entrapping different active ingredients useful for skin protection and regeneration. These specific nanoparticles, embedded into cosmetic emulsions or nonwoven tissues have shown whitening19 and photo-protection effectiveness.20