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Claim substantiation for cosmetics and toiletries industries


For nearly three decades, Structure Probe has been at the forefront of laboratories developing methods of scientific testing to the cosmetics and toiletries industries. Special protocols and procedures have been developed for studying the efficacy of both products formulated and active ingredients being formulated into products to improve and condition human hair and also to "moisturize" and improve dry human skin. Our reports have been submitted to agencies of the US and also foreign governments and we have had our approaches peer reviewed via scientific publications both written and oral. Our techniques and protocols have also been presented before numerous local sections of scientific societies, including the Society of Cosmetic Chemists and the American Chemical Society.
For work with skin care products, our laboratory pioneered the use of high resolution silicone based "replica" systems and we were the first laboratory to develop procedures for "Before" and "After" replicas on the same identical area, as a function of time, in order to demonstrate the most subtle of effects after product application. The results from these kinds of studies, especially when presented as "Before" and "After" comparisons are most dramatic and this technique, originally developed by Structure Probe, is not the "standard technique" in many laboratories demonstrating the efficacy of skin care products.
For work on human hair, "Before" and "After" studies were made possible by the design and construction of what we call our "Rotating Hair Stage" which enable us, in our specially modified SEM to photograph a human hair without any metallization as a "Before" and then take out that entire length of human hair, treat it realistically with either one or a sequence of products, put it back into the SEM during which time the hair shaft is very carefully rotated back to the exact angle of observation, magnification, contrast, and brightness, as it was when photographing the "Before" so that in the end, one can examine and compare "Before" and "After" pairs of the same identical area of the same hair shaft, Before vs. After treatment.
No two projects are ever the same, since no two clients ever have the exact same products with the exact same claims and objectives. Hence, each project is the result of a one-of-a-kind protocol. We know of no other laboratory that is staffed by persons who have had the opportunity to see the effects of so many different products applied to as many different subjects under as many different conditions. We have developed a good sense of what project proposals are going to have a good chance of working and those that will not. Take advantage of our experience and expertise in this "boutique" area of electron microscopy in order to produce those product demonstrations needed for the documentation of advertising and marketing claims for products.

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