Dr Duangjai Tungmunnithum

 

Plants have long been the primary source of active ingredients for pharmaceuticals and cosmeceuticals. Today, the cosmetics and cosmeceuticals industries must continuously innovate in order to ensure the efficacy and safety of their products. While the golden age of chemistry for the development of innovative cosmetics resulted in a significant reduction in the use of natural ingredients, recent controversies over such products that could negatively impact human health or the environment have provided an impetus to reintroduce plant-based raw materials into cosmetic formulations and reinforced the need to explore the unique potential of plants.

 

To maintain its image and credibility in the eyes of the public and to meet ever-increasing regulatory restrictions, plant biomass production and plant extract preparation must be environmentally sustainable. The recent implementation of green technologies significantly reduces negative environmental impacts, while preserving human health and ecosystem quality. 

 

The principles of ‘green chemistry' are gaining traction in many sectors, including cosmetics, due to the need to reduce pollution from toxic chemicals, make industrial processes safer and more sustainable, and provide consumers with ‘clean-labeled products’. During the last decade, green technology is moving from an option to a must in modern industrial processing. Plants produce a rich and diverse array of natural products that have been extracted and used by humans for millennia. 

 

Solvents are the core of the food, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, agrochemical, chemical, and biotechnological process technologies. The application of natural deep eutectic solvents (NaDES) – natural product-based green liquids became the most actively investigated as potential green solvents. NaDES are considered the promising alternative to conventional organic solvents, suitable for green extraction since they have high solvency, high flash points with low toxicity and low environmental impacts, easily biodegradable, obtained from renewable (non-petrochemical) resources at a reasonable price and easy to recycle without any deleterious effect to the environment. 

 

One of the goals of the PIERIC (CosmetoSciences) project is to create green NaDES-based extraction methodologies for various plant natural product categories from diverse plants for cosmetic applications. The chemical characterization as well as biological evaluation of these extracts are also considered. This project is carried out in close collaboration with teams from ICOA (University of Orleans), NMNS and SIMBA (University of Tours) laboratories and our industrial partners.