In our modern world with its advanced economies and large industrial societies, many consumers are turning to OTC products to protect the skin from the potential harmful effects of pollution. This is especially prevalent for those living in urban environments where elevated pollution levels can make healthy living a challenge! The rapid growth of the markets for skin protection and related products in India and Southeast Asia and China may be driven by the scale of pollution in many geographies.


Many if not all the major cosmetic companies are actively developing and promoting products designed to protect the skin from pollution, often incorporating advanced ingredients to counteract environmental stressors. Activation of the inflammasome by the stresses of a polluted environment can cause skin inflammation which is known to be a precursor to such skin conditions as psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, acne and at the other end of the scale – premature aging.
These leading global players and their brands are combining scientific research with novel natural and synthetic ingredients to create multi-functional anti-pollution products that provide:
- antioxidant protection
- strengthening of the skin barrier
- counteraction of the visual and cellular damage caused by environmental pollutants.
Ten Bio offers advanced research tools to support these efforts. Ten Bio’s ex vivo human skin technology is critical for accurately evaluating products and treatments aimed at protecting the skin from pollution. Here’s how TenSkin™ can be deployed to excellent value in the research processes:

1. Barrier Integrity Testing: assessment of how well products preserve or enhance the skin barrier, which is crucial for preventing pollutants from penetrating and causing damage. TenSkin™ is an ideal model for measuring changes in barrier function. The TenSkin™ platform closely mimics the performance of in vivo skin but in an accessible platform. The ability to accurately measure trans epidermal water loss (TEWL) and electrical impedance are key metrics in evaluating the integrity of the skin’s barrier and the protection it affords.
Surface area – by restoring ex vivo skin to its physiological tension, TenSkin™ reinstates a normal in vivo skin texture and surface area. Typically, skin used in ex vivo applications is in a relaxed state, often contracting by up to 50%, resulting in an artificially high surface roughness and area. When not considered, this increase in area influences not only exposure and dosing considerations but also downstream barrier measurements such as TEWL and hydration.
Additionally, The TenSkin™ model’s patented culture frame reliably isolates the skin surface from the culture media environment, maintaining a dry skin surface to help maintain normal barrier integrity for over 2 weeks (compared to the typical one week or less in traditional models). This dry surface is also important for replicating the in vivo application of topical products.
2. Oxidative Stress Markers: pollution, especially from particulate matter and UV exposure, increases oxidative stress in the skin. TenSkin™ can be treated with pollutants to simulate real-world conditions and then analyzed for oxidative stress markers, such as reactive oxygen species (ROS), to evaluate how well different treatments or compounds protect against oxidative damage.
A recent publication1 using TenSkin™ highlighted skin tension to be an important factor in the modulating the expression of cutaneous antimicrobial peptide (AMPs) and in the response of several Ox Inflammatory markers to ozone exposure.
3. Inflammatory Response Measurement: pollutants often trigger inflammation in skin cells. Ex vivo skin models can be treated with pollutants to stimulate the pro-inflammatory markers, e.g. IL-1β, IL-6, or TNF-α which can be readily monitored and measured in the test environment provided by TenSkin™. Combining this pollution exposure with testing of protective compounds allows researchers to observe whether these treatments reduce inflammatory responses. To reliably evaluate these effects a stable model baseline is essential. Traditional ex vivo skin models are often limited in this regard due to a spontaneous and increasing inflammatory profile arising from a paracrine wound response. TenSkin™ maintains skin in a normal in vivo like homeostasis for an extended period, limiting this baseline inflammation profile therefore offering an ideal platform to observe not only the effect of different types of pollution but also evaluate treatments to protect against or repair this damage.
4. DNA Damage Detection: the effect of pollutants on skin can be exacerbated by UV exposure, increasing the risk of serious skin disorders. Ex vivo models can be exposed to combinations of pollutants and UV exposure, with downstream analysis looking for DNA damage (e.g. cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers). Endogenous DNA repair enzymes present and active in TenSkin™ allow observations of normal recovery processes but also facilitate the opportunity to evaluate the efficacy of novel skincare products with formulations which often incorporate pure DNA repair enzymes with additional antioxidant ingredients.
5. Collagen and Elastin Degradation: chronic exposure to pollutants can degrade collagen and elastin in the skin, leading to premature aging. Ex vivo skin can be tested to see if protective agents help maintain the structural integrity of these proteins when exposed to pollution. However, without consistent mechanical tension, collagen fibres can lose their organization and loose functional integrity. Similarly, tension helps to maintain the cross-linking structure of elastin. As such mechano-transduction is essential for homeostasis. When ex vivo skin is cultured in a relaxed state, the elastic fibres in the dermis rapidly loose their organisation and become less functional. Additionally, mechanical tension greatly influences the behaviour of fibroblasts, the cells responsible for the production and maintenance of collagen and elastin. TenSkin™ maintains the skins normal mechanobiology for extended periods creating a stable testing platform for changes in the extra cellular matrix associated with pollution.
6. Gene and Protein Expression Analysis: advanced analytical techniques can assess gene expression changes in response to pollutants, helping to determine the molecular mechanisms of damage and protection. This provides a comprehensive profile of how pollution affects skin health and how effectively treatments can counteract these ill-effects. TenSkin™ has the key attributes of in vivo like responses to pollution-derived challenges and with its prolonged integrity this means that Ten Bio’s platform can be deployed for the assessment of longer-term challenges and the protections being evaluated. TenSkin™ has shown to be valid in a test setting for up to two weeks enabling semi-chronic evaluations.
TenSkin™ provides researchers with an ex vivo skin model that can simulate real-world exposure to pollutants and assess protective strategies in the most biologically relevant context. This confers three major advantages:
- Better pre-clinical data means better planned clinical studies which deliver better results
- Potentially, abbreviated testing procedures that deliver quicker time to market and revenues
- At a lower cost.
Pollution is not improving despite governments’ concerns and commitments to address climate change challenges. Hopefully, in the future, we will see that situation improve. However for now, it is clear that demand for protection is growing. And that demand needs to be met by better products with better data in support of their claims. Ten Bio with TenSkin™ makes a valuable contribution to the development and availability of more effective anti-pollution skincare products.
If you are active in this area of research the Ten Bio team would welcome the opportunity to share more of our experiences in the range of possible applications of TenSkin™ and the value that it can confer on your programmes.
Contact Ten Bio at info@ten-bio.com or follow the link here
Ten Bio team January 2025
- Pambianchi, E., Hagenberg, Z., Pecorelli, A. et al. Tension as a key factor in skin responses to pollution. Sci Rep 13, 16013 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-42629-6