Innovative approach to sustainable oil-based actives

Moreover, the oilbased form is naturally bioavailable and has a high skin tolerance because lipidic biomolecules have an optimal affinity for, and transport through, the stratum corneum. Cosmetic formulations require oil-based ingredients with high quality, high stability and high activity. To achieve this challenge, a new generation of vegetable oil-based actives is obtained with Oléo-écoextraction. This new, intensified green process is founded on the knowledge of the solvent properties of vegetable oils and the theory of polar paradox of antioxidants that both explain the possibility to extract and organise apolar and more polar molecules in an oil.

Polar paradox and extractant properties of vegetable oils

Concerning the efficacy of antioxidants in different lipid media, the ‘polar paradox’ theory was proposed by Porter1 and Frankel2 to explain the phenomenon in antioxidant studies, which states that nonpolar antioxidants like tocopherols are more effective in more polar media, while polar antioxidants like ascorbic acid are more effective in less polar media such as bulk oils.3,4 The polar antioxidants preferentially located at the oil-air and oil-water interfaces are more effective in oxidative inhibition than non-polar ones that are dissolved in the lipid phase (Fig 1). Based on this theory, Oléo-éco-extraction proposes to use vegetable oils as alternative extractants of apolar and more polar molecules like phenolic compounds from plants. The aim is to obtain a potent lipidic complex system of both polar and apolar bioactive molecules with synergistic effects that yield substantial biological activities for the skin.