How OS-01 Works on Mature Skin

Reference Lab

MARCH 23, 2022

When we’re young, building a skin care routine is relatively simple: a face wash, moisturizer and sunscreen will do the trick. But as we grow older and develop visible signs of aging skin, choosing from the overwhelming array of mature skin care products like anti-aging creams, serums, and treatments often feels like an impossible task. What can we trust to actually work?

It’s easy to get lost in new trends like 10-step skincare routines, but try to look past marketing and prioritize your skin’s health above all else. As our largest organ and first line of defense against environmental aggressors, our skin can have an enormous impact on our overall body health. A truly effective product should support your skin’s health first and improve the way it looks as a result. That’s where OneSkin comes in.

Our Topical Supplements are powered by OS-01: the first peptide scientifically proven to reduce skin’s biological age at the molecular level. So skin doesn’t just look younger, it actually functions like younger skin. To understand how our OS-01 Topical Supplements are different from standard anti-aging products, let’s take a closer look at why skin ages in the first place. If you’ve ever had a doctor tell you that you have the “heart of a 20 year old”, you’re already familiar with the concept of biological age. No matter how many candles are on your birthday cake, your body might function like an older or younger body based on your health status.

Unlike chronological age, biological age is malleable and can be increased or decreased based on your daily habits. For example, if you regularly wear SPF, your skin is likely biologically younger than it would be if you experienced a lot of unprotected sun damage.

So how does the OS-01 peptide reduce our skin’s biological age? By targeting a main driver of aging: cellular senescence. Read on to find out just how much the OS-01 peptide impacts cellular senescence and what that means for its effects on mature and aging skin. Cellular senescence is the end stage in a cell’s life cycle when it stops dividing. When we’re young and healthy, senescent skin cells are quickly cleared away and replaced with new cells. But as we get older, our body becomes less efficient at clearing away senescent cells. Like rotten apples that spoil the bunch, senescent cells drive healthy neighboring cells into senescence, triggering widespread damage that can make our skin look and function like older skin.

By reducing the number of senescent cells in the skin, senomorphic compounds like our proprietary OS-01 peptide have the potential to slow down and even reverse biological skin aging.

Just how much can the OS-01 peptide reduce senescent burden in the skin? Our scientists ran an experiment to answer that exact question. Using beta-galactosidase, an enzyme that selectively stains senescent cells blue, we found that OS-01 reduced senescent cells by up to 50% in in vitro fibroblast cultures from patient derived samples.

The OS-01 peptide also maintained the total number of cells, meaning it promoted not just the reduction of senescent cells, but also the renewal of healthier ones. Now that we know how the OS-01 peptide works, let’s talk about what the OS-01 peptide actually does for mature skin.

To analyze OS-01’s effects on the skin, our R&D team utilized skin cells from a variety of donors of different ages, ethnicities, and skin types to grow human skin models. By first exposing these skin models to the OS-01 peptide, then utilizing quantitative and qualitative analysis techniques, our researchers measured the effects of OS-01.

In tests, the OS-01 peptide reliably and effectively improved markers of skin health and aging including:

• Improving cellular structure within the skin
• Increasing skin’s epidermal thickness
• Reducing skin’s biological age, based on DNA markers

Let’s take a deeper look at these effects. If you feel like your skin is getting more delicate with time, you’re not alone. As we age, our epidermal layer thins – resulting in telltale signs of aging like wrinkles, crepiness, and skin fragility. This thinning impacts not just the skin’s appearance, but also the body’s overall health. As the epidermis becomes thinner, the skin becomes more susceptible to tearing and injury–leaving the body more vulnerable to external pathogens.

The OS-01 peptide restores epidermal thickness to keep your skin stronger, firmer, and smoother. In the lab, this impact is obvious just by examining the skin structure under a microscope before and after treatment with the OS-01 peptide. By comparing these skin histology images, you can see that after exposure to OS-01:

• Epidermal thickness increased by 28%
• Cellular structure became more defined
• Connectivity improved

These findings are especially important for mature skin concerns. By thickening the epidermal layer and improving cellular organization, the OS-01 peptide can strengthen the skin barrier and improves cellular function – helping the skin resist injuries that can occur later in life. With time, our DNA actually changes: accumulating telltale markers of aging. No matter how young your skin looks, these DNA modifications reveal whether your skin is functioning like younger, healthier skin or like older, more vulnerable skin.

To understand whether OS-01 actually helps our skin function like younger skin, our R&D team measured its effects with MolClock, the first molecular clock capable of measuring skin’s biological age using DNA markers of skin aging.

In our test, the biological age of our lab-grown ex vivo human skin model started at 70.83 years old. Astoundingly, after only 5 days of exposure to the OS-01 peptide, the skin’s age decreased to just 68.23 years, meaning that the OS-01 peptide reduced the skin’s biological age by 2.5 years in just 5 days!

These results are perhaps the most exciting of all as they prove that exposure to the OS-01 peptide reliably reduces the biological age of skin. This means that OS-01 doesn’t just make skin look younger, it also helps skin function like its younger self. At the cellular level, it’s clear that the OS-01 peptide reverses signs of skin aging and restores skin health. But how do these effects show up visibly?

The next step was to take the OS-01 peptide out of the lab and put it to the test on real people. For this, we relied on a third-party clinical research organization to evaluate the efficacy of OS-01 FACE, OneSkin’s daily facial Topical Supplement powered by the OS-01 peptide.

The study was performed by a third party CRO and outcomes were evaluated through expert clinical grade, instrumental analysis and consumer perception. n=22, average age= 5 9.5 y. Instrumental evaluation - *vapometer analysis ** Double blind expert clinical grader evaluation

In a 12-week clinical study, 22 participants with an average age of 59.5 years experienced a significant improvement in skin elasticity and barrier function (+15%) from using OS-01 FACE, correlating with the epidermal thickening we observed in the lab.

Additionally, study participants observed:

• Fewer visible wrinkles & fine lines
• Firmer, smoother skin
• Improved radiance & fewer visible pores
• Better overall skin appearance

By restoring skin health at the cellular level, OS-01 FACE provides noticeable changes to the surface level in just 12 weeks: visibly rejuvenating mature skin to its younger self. With the OS-01 peptide, there’s no need for 10-step routines or dozens of supposedly effective ingredients. Just one powerful molecule effectively restores your skin health and reduces your skin’s biological age. All you need is a convenient way to reap its benefits. That’s why we created our Topical Supplements: transformative longevity treatments in the form of easy-to-use daily moisturizers for the face and body. Pair them with PREP to cleanse your skin every night and reduce your skin routine to just three steps. With our Topical Supplements, finding the right regimen for mature skin just became so much easier.

• OneSkin’s proprietary peptide, OS-01, is the first peptide proven to reduce skin’s biological age*, making it a breakthrough age-reversing therapy for mature skin.
• The OS-01 peptide reduces senescent burden*–one of the key cellular markers of skin aging.
• The OS-01 peptide increases epidermal thickness*, improving skin strength and visible signs of aging like crepiness, wrinkles and skin fragility.
• By strengthening the skin barrier, the OS-01 peptide keeps your body protected from environmental stressors, providing a potential improvement in overall health.
• With our Topical Supplements, you don’t need a 10-step skincare routine. Just two daily moisturizers–one for body and one for face–are all you need to boost the health of your mature skin.

*Shown in lab-grown ex vivo human skin models