Shiseido awarded for research at 34th Ifscc Congress 2024

His name is Daigo Inoue the Shiseido researcher awarded at the 34th Ifscc 2024 Brazil Iguazu Falls Congress, the world's largest research conference on cosmetic technology. Inoue won first prize in the Podium Presentation Basic Research category out of a total of 688 presentations (83 Podium Presentations and 605 Poster Presentations). In addition, researcher Anna Okishima was awarded the Henry Maso Award 2024, an award given to young researchers.

This is the 32nd time Shiseido has received an award at the conference organised by the Ifscc - the highest number of awards given to cosmetics manufacturers in the world. Shiseido wishes to continue to create innovative values based on its strong research and development capabilities and to provide cosmetic innovations to people around the world to realise the company mission "Beauty innovations for a better world".

The winner's study entitled 'Melanoaging: discovering and solving the metabolic change specific to age spots and cellular senescence caused by excessive melanin deposition' and focused on the cellular ageing phenomena related to age spots, revealed the reason why these become permanent and identified a targeted solution.

Solar lentigo (hereafter referred to as age spots) is a skin blemish that inevitably affects the perceived age of individuals. However, until now, the 'life cycle of age spots', in which these spots arise and become fixed, has remained unexplored. Using a non-invasive measurement technique, the research revealed that in age spots, mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (Oxphos) is underregulated. Furthermore, it found that this underregulation of Oxphos is caused by excessive melanin deposition, which in turn leads to cellular senescence. The results provide new evidence that excessive melanin accumulation causes cellular metabolic changes and facilitates the senescence process specific to age spots, called 'melanoaging'. Therefore Shiseido has developed a combination of lightening ingredients with a significant effect on melanoaging.

"Science advances day by day and dermatology is no exception,' Inoue comments. 'The result of our research was possible because we were able to observe the skin from the 'shoulder of the giant' that Shiseido built. The research, for which we received the first prize, is only a prologue to future research on age-related spots, and we hope to make further progress in the future'.