How Substances in Agricultural Waste Material Can Be Used as Active Ingredients in Skin Care Products

Sammanfattning: Aging of the skin is an inevitable process that occurs throughout a lifetime and exposure to environmental pollutants is a factor accelerating this process. Phytochemicals present in plants possess biological activities known to protect or repair the skin cells and when used in skin care products they can slow down the skin aging process. In this project agricultural waste materials are investigated to see if they contain compounds with biological activity on human skin and can be used as active ingredients in skin care products. Secondary metabolites were extracted from up to six fractions from seven different crops. 76 compounds were found and identified using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry and 68 human targets were found using in- silico evaluation. The extracts were also investigated for antioxidant activity, inhibition of glycation processes and inhibition of the enzymes tyrosinase and kallikrein-related peptidase 5. Each of the seven plants showed some promising results and 10 extracts had high activity for one of the four primary screening assays, one extract had high activity for two. There is a possibility for some of these extracts being used as active ingredients in skin care products. However, more research is needed to fully know which extracts and for what purpose. The method can be used to investigate the activity of other plant extracts to broaden the research and increase the chances of finding a new active ingredient for skin care.