Liposomes are tiny bubbles designed to deliver active ingredients in your beauty products deep into the skin. It’s critical that the content of liposomes isn’t spilled before application or else, it will become pretty much useless. Up till now, it was thought that liposomes were doing an excellent job, preserving the ingredients and delivering them to the deepest layers of the skin, but as it turns out, this might not be the case.According to researchers from University of Southern Denmark, liposomes never make it deep into your skin. They get destroyed either before they enter the skin or very soon after. This means that all amazing ingredients you paid for never penetrate your skin and can’t make much difference.
During this study, the researchers labeled liposomes with two fluorescent colors. Concerted movement of these two colors was supposed to give the researchers clues on how liposomes move once they are applied to the skin, as it would also provide evidence that liposomes are still intact until they reach their destination under the skin. Sadly, this didn’t happen, which means liposomes get destroyed much earlier than previously thought.
In addition, previous research never proved that liposomes were efficient carriers. There was an assumption that liposomes could actually penetrate deep into the skin, but there was no sufficient proof for that. Now we know this simply doesn’t work.
The human skin is designed to prevent external components to enter the human body. It is natural, that it also prevents liposomes to enter,
says professor Luis Bagatolli from Membrane Biophysics and Biophotonics Group/MEMPHYS Center for Biomembrane Physics, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, University of Southern Denmark.