“LVMH has been cooperating for a long time with Japanese universities. Almost immediately, we focused our interest on the specificities of Japanese and Asian skins and we have already organized several scientific conferences in the region, in Japan of course, but also in China and the Philippines,” explains Frédéric Bonté, Director of Scientific Communication at LVMH Recherche, the research and development division of LVMH (Dior, Guerlain, Givenchy, etc.) for perfumes and cosmetics.
Frédéric Bonté, Director of Scientific Communication at LVMH Recherche, during the Japanese-French scientific seminar at the French Embassy in Tokyo
"This seminar, which is now in its fourth edition, is the occasion of a meeting between Japanese and French scientists. Participants include academics, business representatives and members of learned societies," he adds.
Natural antioxidant molecules
This year’s seminar was dedicated to natural antioxidants (from botanical or marine origin) and their application in the cosmetics sector, but also in the pharmaceutical and food industries.
Researchers from Japanese and French universities presented new natural molecules issued from rare plants or seaweeds, empowered with potentially strong antioxidant and pharmacological properties.
Such active ingredients can be used in cosmetic formulas in order to fight the free radicals and oxidative processes due to UV and pollution, damaging factors involved in skin ageing and some skin diseases.
Furthermore, researchers described new methods that now integrate computer predictive calculation and simulation methods from chemical formulas in order to predict their anti-radical and antioxidant powers.
“Due to urban pollution, skin and body oxidation today is of major concern. Up to now, it was very time consuming and difficult to make a confident prediction about the anti-oxidative properties of molecules. However, the research on new antioxidant molecules is growing rapidly,” underlines LVMH Recherche.
