Antimicrobial booster with skin benefits

Consumers today associate natural and nature identical ingredients with safety. According to Mintel (Mintel 2030 Trend webinar) 58% of US women aged 18-34 believe that natural means healthy. 66% of Indian women aged 35-44 agree that products with natural ingredients are better for their skin. The growing consumer awareness and concern for the environment is driving the demand for sustainable, biodegradable and “clean beauty” products. The higher amount of natural ingredients in cosmetics makes the development more challenging for the formulators. Besides impact on stability, colour or smell, natural ingredients make cosmetic formulations usually more prone to microbial growth, they need optimised protection as they carry higher risk of contamination. Formulators are facing shrinking options for preservation due to regulatory changes and social media pressure. Where to find a broad-spectrum antimicrobial technology with good market reputation and skin mildness?

A natural antimicrobial revealed by artificial intelligence (AI)

It is well known that the use of AI and machine learning techniques can help to uncover hidden relationships in complicated sets of data. Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are a complex set of coupled equations, resembling the connections of neurons in the brain and make predictions that lead to improved solutions and optimised products and processes. As those predictions can be very accurate, plots of predicted vs. actual values often result in a oneto-one relationship. In the actual approach, the ANN was trained to recognise key molecular features that lead to antimicrobial activity and iterative screening of candidate molecules led to the discovery of Raspberry Ketone.