Pursuing The Promise of Truly Personalized Skincare
When Rensl Dillon, Goodier’s VP of Innovation and R&D, talks about “personalized skincare,” he is not talking, as many do today, about a person mixing and matching products to customize a skincare routine. Rather, he is talking about the promise of a future where skincare products and routines are precision-targeted based on inputs such as a person’s genetic and molecular information, lifestyle attributes, diet, and individual skin analysis.
Today, advances in genetic science and machine learning are opening the door to a new era of medical science that will include skincare. Precision medicine and personalized medicine are two approaches to healthcare that aim to tailor medical treatments and interventions to individual patients. “Precision medicine refers to the use of genetic and molecular information to identify specific disease subtypes and develop targeted therapies. It involves analyzing a patient's DNA, RNA, and protein expression to better understand the underlying mechanisms of disease and tailor treatments to individual patients. Personalized medicine, on the other hand, takes into account not only genetic information but also other factors such as a patient's lifestyle, environment, and medical history to develop a comprehensive treatment plan that is tailored to the individual patient.”¹
Both precision and personalized medicine have begun to play important roles in the treatment of diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer’s, and the management of chronic conditions such as high blood pressure.
We are already seeing these advanced approaches improving the treatment of conditions such as acne and psoriasis that cost billions of dollars to treat annually and affect, respectively, 50 million and 7.5 million Americans per year.² Joint treatment guidelines of the American Academy of Dermatology Association and the National Psoriasis Foundation reference the utility of such biomarker use in efficient treatment.³
Meanwhile, advances being made in skin-interfaced wearable sensors are another development helping to drive the future of personalized care. Wearable sensors could perform continuous and non-invasive data collection from the human body, opening up new opportunities for long-term health assessment and disease diagnosis. Indeed, we are now at the forefront of wearable chemical sensors, such as Gatorade's GX Sweat Patch for hydration and nutrient monitoring, being in commercial production.⁴
The skincare industry is rapidly moving in a direction where the traditional “one-size-fits-most approach” will give way to a growing therapeutic portfolio of precision and personalized treatments. Imagine the day when the trial-and-error approach of attempting one therapy after another until eventually identifying one that works is replaced by collecting genetic information through precision diagnostic approaches to determine which therapeutic options are most likely to be effective for a patient. At Goodier, we are committed to being part of that future, so we will work diligently with our global research partners and actively seek new partnerships interested in developing new personalized skincare applications to bring to market.
Role of Precision Medicine and Personalized Medicine in the Treatment of Diseases, PreferPub, Vol. 3 No. 1 (2023): Book Series 3
American Academy of Dermatology Association, Skin conditions by the numbers
How Personalized Medicine Has The Potential to Revolutionize Dermatology, Dermatology Times, June 06, 2022
Skin-Interfaced Sensors in Digital Medicine: From Materials to Applications, Cell Press, ScienceDirect, Volume 2, Issue 6, 3 June 2020, Pages 1