Nature's Nanotech: How Plant Exosomes Are Transforming Skincare

[Intro] Hey, everyone. Welcome to Facially Conscious. I'm Trina Renea, a medically-trained master esthetician here in Los Angeles, Rebecca Gadberry, our resident skincare scientist and regulatory and marketing expert. We are here to help you navigate the sometimes using and competitive world of skincare. 

Our mission is to provide you with insider knowledge on everything from product ingredients to medical procedures, lasers, fillers, and ever-changing trends. With our expert interviews with chemists, doctors, laser reps, and estheticians, you'll be equipped to make informative decisions before investing in potentially expensive treatments. 

It's the Wild West out there, so let's make it easier for you one episode at a time. Are you ready to discover the latest and greatest skin care secrets? Tune in and let us be your go-to girls for all things Facially Conscious. Let's dive in.

01:14 Trina Renea: Hi, everybody. How are you today? We are back with Facially Conscious. I am Trina, your co-host, a master esthetician. And I'm here with Rebecca Gadberry. Hi, Rebecca. 

01:28 Rebecca Gadberry: Hi, darlin’. How are you? 

01:31 Trina Renea: I'm good. Rebecca is our resident cosmetic scientist, if you guys don't know her already, and our renowned skincare industry expert who knows everything about everything because she's really smart. 

01:44 Rebecca Gadberry: No, she's a know-it-all. That's what she is. And I don't mind sharing that with everybody. 

01:50 Trina Renea: Well, you study for the rest of us, so we thank you for that.

01:55 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, you're so generous. Thank you.

01:59 Trina Renea: She spends her days studying. 

02:01 Rebecca Gadberry: Actually, I do. I love to study and learn. You know that. 

02:05 Trina Renea: You're like a forever-school person. What is it called? Forever in college. 

02:12 Rebecca Gadberry: Student. 

02:14 Trina Renea: Forever students. 

02:17 Rebecca Gadberry: So, we're going to talk about plant exosomes today. 

02:20 Trina Renea: Yes, exosomes. A big word in the industry right now. And I'm very excited because we are going to understand what plant exosomes are rather than human exosomes. We want to just kind of throw it out there. It's a new topic and it's really revolutionary, like when the peptides came into the market. This is like the next big thing, I feel like, that's coming in.

02:56 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, that was like 30 years ago, though. 

02:58 Trina Renea: Yeah.

02:59 Rebecca Gadberry: I remember I was one of the very first to work with the Matrixyl peptides in 1998. We could do things with peptides we could never do before. Now, these exosomes are going to make as big of a revolutionary change, if not bigger. 

And one of the unique things about exosomes is that they have literally thousands of different types of peptides…

03:29 Trina Renea: Wrapped up inside of them, right? 

03:31 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. These things are like little micro bubbles that cells make, human cells and plant cells that they have the same membrane as the cell does. It's called a bilipid membrane. 

03:47 Trina Renea: They're little carriers, right? They're carrying all these ingredients to…

03:51 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, like putting it in a sack and sealing it off, maybe like a baggie, like a little plastic sack, sealing it up and then sending it out into the environment where it lives into the neighborhood to talk to other cells and also to have an effect on the environment. There's anti-inflammatories and antioxidants in these things that help to calm down inflammation, help to protect not only other cells but some of the skin tissues, like the skin's barrier and the dermis where wrinkling and lines occur. Helps to protect from the attack of the free radicals from the environment and also from within the body itself. 

These things were originally discovered, I think, in the mid-1980s. We didn't know what they did. We knew that there was a bunch of stuff in them. We thought that they were like trash sacks or something that the cell would use to take out the trash, literally. But it turns out that they're ways that the cells used to signal one another. To say, “Hey, this is going on here. What's going on there?”

A cell might send out an emergency message into the environment using exosomes or different cell signaling molecules, or what they're called, and they're usually peptides. They may be saying, “Hey, we're stressed,” or, “We're under attack. We need some help.” And the neighboring cells pick up on it and produce these exosomes and send them out to the cell that sent the original SOS message. 

So, there could be nutrients in these things. There's so much in there that we don't really understand, yet how much is in there and exactly what they're doing.

But we do have hope. There is a lot of research going on, especially now that we've been able to improve our technology and delve a lot deeper into the exosomes and what's actually in there.

06:00 Trina Renea: You're right. I like to think of it like the plant it takes care of itself. So if it has a wound at the surface or somewhere on the plant, then the plant’s cells produce these little healing molecules and send them out in an exosome bag to the wound and repair. In a simple term, like…

06:32 Rebecca Gadberry: That's really simplistic, because they're not sending it to the wound. They're sending it to the cells that help to heal the wound. 

06:39 Trina Renea: Exactly. Around where it is. 

06:42 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. And these things we can put into our products. They're like 30 to 150 nanometers, so they're truly microscopic. They're about a thousand times smaller than a human hair, just to give you an idea of what we're working with. And they've been created over billions of years of evolution. 

We can have plant exosomes and human exosomes. They were developed over billions of years and they were developed by cells before cells got together to make plants and animals. On the evolutionary tree of life, if you will, exosomes come from the microorganism that we're all descended from. And those exosomes, that technology, the mechanics of it, the makeup of them are all the same as far as how they're structured and how they communicate. So we could take a plant exosome and it's basically going to communicate to human cells what it would communicate to other plant cells.

08:01 Trina Renea: That's so crazy to think about. 

08:03 Rebecca Gadberry: It's totally insane. 

08:04 Trina Renea: Does that mean we're a plant?

08:07 Rebecca Gadberry: No. It means that we have a lot in common with plants. As a matter of fact, you know how they say like we're 99.9% chimpanzee DNA? Well, we're about 56% banana DNA.

08:22 Trina Renea: What? I'm 100% mermaid DNA. 

08:25 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, of course you are, sweetheart. We all know that.

08:31 Trina Renea: I come from the sea and algae.

08:33 Rebecca Gadberry: And algae. You're algae. But algae DNA, or I'm sorry, algae life, also has its predecessors in this original microorganism. That original microorganism, by the way, is something I love to talk about. I don't know if I've talked about it on the podcast before, but it's called LUCA, the last universal known ancestor. L-U— oh, common ancestor, L-U-C-A. 

I have a grandson named Luca. He spells it with a K, so I get them confused sometimes. But there's a big difference between our last universal common ancestor and my grandson Luka. However, there's some commonalities too, but if we want to get totally weird.

09:24 Trina Renea: I want to get back to the banana. What do you mean we're 54% banana?

09:29 Rebecca Gadberry: 56% banana DNA we share. We shared DNA with molds. We share DNA with flies. It doesn't mean that it's good or bad. It simply means that that part of our DNA was shared with other life forms before we all split off and went our separate ways as plants or mammals or reptiles or fungi or whatever. 

It's this type of commonality that allows us to use plant exosomes to communicate with human cells. That's part of the remarkable nature of it. These exosomes from plants not only communicate with nearby cells but they often defend against harmful pathogens, like bacteria, yeast, mold and viruses. They can send nutrients from one cell to another. They can help control the growth and development of other cells. 

Knowing all of that, it makes a lot of sense as to what's packed into an exosome. There's proteins and peptides that the cell uses to identify itself in other cells and to send out messages about you need to grow now, you need to produce more collagen, you need to improve hydration. There's antioxidants and anti-inflammatory compounds that cells use to protect themselves in their surroundings, including nearby cells that may need some extra help fighting free radicals and calming down inflammation molecules, like I was talking at the beginning. 

There's also different types of RNA and DNA fragments that the cell uses if it feels like it's under attack. It will release these exosomes and put in these DNA fragments to ensure that the cell is sending out the exosomes to pass on its genetic legacy for whoever wants to pick it up. 

11:39 Trina Renea: This is amazing new information that is just mind-blowing. It's really God-like. It's crazy.

11:47 Rebecca Gadberry: I know. And it's how human-derived exosomes also work. 

11:55 Trina Renea: The fact that we're just discovering all of this right now in time is just finding out how intricate, detailed we are and how things work and that we're able to utilize these in cosmetics and beauty and in products. Are there a lot of people starting to use these plant exosomes? 

12:18 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, my goodness. The market is flooded with them.

12:21 Trina Renea: With the plant exosomes?

12:24 Rebecca Gadberry: With the plant, yeah. There's a problem with the human- derived exosomes that you and I have talked about.

12:28 Trina Renea: Right. They're not FDA proved and we there's a lot of misuse of those happening right now.

12:37 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah, they're not stable. You have to really work with them and the cosmetic chemists really need to know what they're doing to work with them. 

Also, they may not be the proper purification. They're also really expensive. You could spend $700 for an ounce of a human-derived exosome or more. 

And I'm not saying that plant-derived exosomes and human-derived exosomes do the same thing. There's varieties in both of them. There's varieties in what human-derived exosomes do. And if people are interested in that, you did a great episode with the doctor who is working with these.

13:21 Trina Renea: Dr. Maguire from NeoGenesis, yes. He is a cancer research scientist, oncologist who is working in stem cell research with human-derived— yes, we do have two episodes about that. If you just type in the word ‘exosomes’ in our search bar on our website.

13:40 Rebecca Gadberry: At Faciallyconscious.com.

13:42 Rebecca Gadberry: Exactly. 

13:45 Trina Renea: You listen to those. It's fascinating. 

But are plant exosomes less expensive?

13:50 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, they're much less expensive. There's a lot of advantages to them. They're often times smaller. They can penetrate more deeply than a lot of the human exosomes. And we'll talk about some of the other comparative advantages, but I really like to go into what they can do. 

The market right now, as far as consumers are concerned, and the professional market is just starting. Brands are just starting to come out with these materials. 

On the research and development side, though, we're being inundated with suppliers from around the world, ingredient suppliers from around the world that are using different types of patented technologies to not only get the cells to produce the exosomes with the materials that they want within them, with the proper cell signals and different peptides, different antioxidants, etc., but they're also able to stabilize them better. 

It's not as expensive as human-derived and the FDA is not having any issues with plant-derived exosomes like they are with human-derived. The primary issues with the human-derived is the purity, the claims. A lot of drug claims are being made for these things. It doesn't really matter at that point whether they work great, because they do, but it also matters as to the type of company that's selling them and the type of precautions they've taken. 

15:37 Trina Renea: Which is not controlled yet, so buyer beware. To make sure that you're really working with a legitimate company, not buying off the internet and not buying out of the country. There's a couple really legit companies that are trustworthy, but I would say it's at the very beginning of this. Until the FDA wraps their little arms around it and protects this, I would be wary of it.

But also…

16:12 Rebecca Gadberry: I don't think the FDA is going to wrap their arms around it. I don't think that this technology is going to get approved. 

16:15 Trina Renea: They're not? You don’t think so?

16:18 Rebecca Gadberry: No, not for cosmetics. But I think that doctors will be able to continue using them. So, there's going to be some things that happen in the next few years with these, human- and plant-derived. I personally think that we won't have any problems with the FDA with plant-derived, from what I've been able to discover with my contacts, but they are concerned about especially the purity and the claims. So you just need to, like Trina said, buy from reputable people and be careful of what you're using. 

I think that NeoGenesis, and SkinMedica is the other one, they're both very reputable. I know you've been using them with your clients and you really like the results. 

But let's talk about plant exosomes. 

17:11 Trina Renea: Yeah, let's get into the science and research. Let's talk about it.

17:16 Rebecca Gadberry: It's really exciting because there's a lot of research on the genetic effects that plant exosomes have on human cells. There's one study alone that showed that a particular type of exosome, and this was not actually the way the exosome was made but where it was taken from, and I forget the plant that it was taken from right now, but there are studies that show that they've been able to influence over 1,500 different genes just in keratinocytes, which are your cells above the dermis and below the stratum corneum that produces the skin's barrier, the stratum corneum. 

They work in a way that's called epigenetic. By turning up and turning down genes that are producing peptides and proteins rather than just hoping to affect them, like regular plant extracts do. They can also target genetic pathways that are related to skin aging and regeneration to barrier repair, hydration, even skin lightening to melanin production. 

Some of these are able to enhance wound healing. There was one study that improved the skin's healing capacity, which is what you were originally talking about, by 52% in just a matter of a couple of weeks. And when we can improve wound healing, we can also help the skin look and act younger by making the cells more vigorous and able to produce more of the young, healthy tissue. 

This is what the first claims were for Matrixyl when it first came out, the grandfather of all the peptides, is it came out of a National Institutes of Health NIH study for wound healing. It was so amazing at wound healing that we decided to put it into skincare products that worked on aging skin. 

In a very similar way as Matrixyl, these things have dozens, if not hundreds or thousands of different types of peptides, depending upon the exosome you're looking at. We even found out that aloe vera, which has been a much loved ingredient and almost an expected staple in every skincare product, that we're actually learning a whole bunch of new things about aloe vera. But one of the things that we found out was by taking an exosome of aloe, it helped to repair the skin's barrier by 31% by increasing the key lipid in the barrier, which are ceramides. That really helps with sensitive skin and compromised skin and super dry skin, but they don't clog pores like a lot of these lipids do.

There's also the antioxidant delivery. So you can take an exosome from green tea and compare it and make sure that the predominant antioxidant in green tea that makes it such a great antioxidant and anti-inflammatory, you can make sure that the exosome has a high level of this antioxidant. It's called epigallocatechin gallate or EGCG. Put it in the exosome and just put the EGCG in by itself in the same base and we get almost a three-and-a-half times increase at more antioxidant delivery into the skin than when the EGCG is just added on its own.

21:17 Trina Renea: I have a question that I think people out there might be wondering, and that is, with the cosmetic chemists that are in there making these products right now, are exosomes just going to become a staple ingredient in all products, basically? 

21:31 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes. They're going to be as much a staple as aloe and ceramides and AHAs. 

21:39 Trina Renea: Something to improve the efficacy of the product and make the product work better on your skin and in the bottle and with others. Are people just putting them, chemists just putting these in products and releasing them or are they using the word ‘exosome’ to sell them currently? Like, are they using it as a marketing tool or are they just throwing the ingredient in products?

22:02 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, the chemist isn't using it as a marketing tool. The marketing people are using it as marketing tools. The chemists operate under the direction, usually, of the marketing people or the product developers for the brand. And yes, they are being explained as exosomes or identified as exosomes. So when you go to look for them, you'll see ‘exosome’ somewhere on the information.

There's also language biohacking. This can refer to exosomes or other technologies that help cells stay younger, acting longer so the skin stays younger-looking longer. There's a variety of ways that these can be used. 

I'm actually working on a product that I'm hoping to bring out in the fall that is using a couple of exosomes that I was really impressed with. One of them is from turmeric, the herb that we all love that gives you that yellow color from the curcumin that's in there. It's a very strong antioxidant.

Well, what they've done with this exosome, it was originally designed to work for skin with eczema. It was so amazing on calming down eczema that the company that made the exosome brought it into the cosmetic industry. What we found is that the turmeric exosome, which is trade named ____ [turmeris? 23:36] , actually helps to work with skin that's under stress from cortisol. This is the primary way it's working.

So, it identifies or works with different inflammatory molecules that are in the skin and helps to neutralize them by communicating with cells to help calm them down, to help them stop producing these different inflammatory molecules. At just 1%, that helps to smooth out deeper wrinkles and also to improve skin's firmness. 

24:22 Trina Renea: I'm requesting that I am one of the first to try it. 

24:26 Rebecca Gadberry: You will be. Actually, I'm the first one to try it. I've been working with it for six months now trying to perfect it, because these puppies are difficult to stabilize. They have to go into a very refined or narrow pH, in this case between 4.0 and 8.0. And they don't do everything.

So, what I did was I went out and found another technology that comes from Camelina sativa seeds. It's in is kind of what's called an oleosome. This is very similar to the cell membrane of a plant or a human. It's made out of lipids. And we can put these little peptide tags on them so that the cell knows what the contents are. 

What we're doing with ours is we have put in epidermal growth factors to stabilize them, because it turns out that epidermal growth factors are too large and incompatible with intact skin. If the barrier is healthy, the EGF, epidermal growth factor can't get in but it also isn't stable. If you just put epidermal growth factor into a product, its stability is going to flash out. It's going to destabilize over a period of several hours to a few days, if maybe even a week.

But that's not enough time to even make it and get it into the container and on the shelf to sell it to you. By the time you use a product with epidermal growth factor, the likelihood of it still being in at the percentage that it was originally added, or even being in there at all, has been strongly reduced. By using this new oleosome technology, we stuff the epidermal growth factor inside. 

One of the first tests that we did, there was a 203% increase in skin firmness in 14 days. 

26:38 Trina Renea: Wow. 

26:40 Rebecca Gadberry: So, what I've done is I've taken the turmeris and this EGF exosome-like material. I don't even know if it's truly an exosome but it is structured like one. This helps to firm the skin. It helps to refine the skin, you know, that refined-pore structure that everybody wants with the glass skin.

27:06 Trina Renea: Yeah. 

27:07 Rebecca Gadberry: The turmeris does that. 

27:10 Trina Renea: I just put a little Aquaphor over the face, a very smooth layer of Aquaphor and I have that look. 

27:17 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh yeah. Well, I'm looking at you right now, honey, and you have your, what do they call it?

27:24 Trina Renea: Filter? 

27:25 Rebecca Gadberry: Your filter is on. We're recording over Zoom and…

27:28 Trina Renea: I look beautiful with these filters.

27:31 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, my God, you look like you're 10 years old, darling. 

27:33 Trina Renea: I know. Isn’t this pretty? If only. 

27:37 Rebecca Gadberry: Don't need skincare. We'll just communicate with each other on Zoom. 

27:41 Trina Renea: Exactly. 

27:42 Rebecca Gadberry: So, these things are really interesting. We're just starting to understand them and to have more access to them. I just got visited by, or our lab got visited by a company that is here in the United States but it's importing a lot of exosomes from around the world. They had over 28 exosomes all doing different things. 

28:05 Trina Renea: Oh, my gosh. How do you guys choose what to use? That seems crazy. 

28:12 Rebecca Gadberry: We choose by what the projects are on the bench. If we have a project for skin brightening, we'll look for exosome technology that has data on it, clinical data, meaning that it's been tested on people for a certain amount of time. Then we'll use that. So, we have to put them in at the percentage that was used in the study and we have to put them into a base that's very similar to what was used in the study, or we have to duplicate the study ourselves, which can be quite expensive. And if it's already been done, it's easier and faster to market doing it the way I talked about first.

28:51 Trina Renea: I have a question. A brightening ingredient that you use, not exosomes, but just a regular brightening ingredient, like give me one of your top brightening ingredients from a plant. Kojic acid?

29:11 Rebecca Gadberry: Actually, okay. Yeah, kojic acid.

29:14 Trina Renea: Or just some ingredient like vitamin C in orange, let's say. If someone is drawing an ingredient out of a plant that is already a brightening plant, I mean, that is used for brightening the skin, then are they just pulling the exosome from that plant and it just makes it more intense or are they…

29:40 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. So you mean when using exosome technology.

29:41 Trina Renea: More brightening? Yes.

29:44 Rebecca Gadberry: No, the exosome is actually communicating with the cell, the melanocyte in this instance, that is making the melanin to darken the skin. I don't know a lot more about that research, just what I know off of exosomes. I would assume that, but you know what we say about assuming. 

On the other hand, if you're using a plant extract, the plant extracts have molecules in them that may not be in exosomes, but the extract isn't being made to produce an exosome. The molecules are just in there. In which case, we have to make sure that the molecules that do the lightening are in there each time we make the extract at the right percentage to lighten or brighten the skin. 

With exosomes, we need to make sure that the exosomes are going to do their job in brightening the skin and use the correct percentage that was used in the study. I think the bottom line here is what we always say. It really matters on how much you put in the product, how often you apply it and how much you apply the product at home in order to see results. 

Because these things are what we call dose dependent. They're just like taking an aspirin. If you take half of an aspirin, it's not going to get rid of your headache. If you take a bottle of aspirin, you could bleed to death. So you've got to take the recommended amount, which is two to three aspirins depending upon who you are and how your body responds. 

The same is true with these exosomes and with plant extracts themselves, or any other performance ingredient that you're going to find in a product. 

31:31 Trina Renea: Right. Then how do plant exosomes differ from plant extracts? 

31:36 Rebecca Gadberry: Again, they have different compounds or molecules. The plant extracts are derived by methods like pressing the oil like you have with olive oil, or distillation or solvent extraction. Distillation, like the way I grew up in the Welch's grape commercial area where they always talked about how they capture the essence of the grape. Well, that process is through distillation. 

So, distillation or through solvent extraction, like using water or glycerin. Just the same way that we make a solvent out of tea with water and plant leaves, or coffee beans and water. These extractions based on the solvent, in this case, the solvent was water, but you can use other solvents like glycerin or glycols or even CO₂ extraction to get the molecules you're looking for to do the job from the plant. 

With exosomes, you're going through a very refined and patented process to make sure that the exosomes, these little micro bubbles, come out completely intact. Then you need to preserve them inside the product to make sure that they don't break apart and interact with other molecules in the product. So, they're very different 

And exosomes, because of their small nature, can predictably and quickly penetrate into the skin and into the cells where extracts are more passively diffused into the barrier and through the skin. Exosomes also can be more stable than some extracts, which can react to light and oxygen exposure. We can concentrate a lot more into an exosome, like I said, literally thousands of different types of peptides that we can't get out of an extract, so they're a lot more effective. 

Now, there's a case for using both, depending upon your formula. They can complement one another. For instance, on the turmeris exosome that I was talking about, you can also use turmeris extract because it too is an anti-inflammatory. While the exosomes don't have color, the turmeris extract does, so it'll give you that expected color that you get when you use a turmeric product.

34:23 Trina Renea: Okay. So for listeners who are excited to try products with exosomes, plant exosomes, what should they consider or keep in mind? Like, how are they going to know if they're getting a good one or a bad one? Are they all equal? 

34:42 Rebecca Gadberry: No, they're not all equal. 

34:43 Trina Renea: How are we to know as consumers?

34:47 Rebecca Gadberry: Look for studies on them. A lot of companies are now doing comparison studies of before and after with different products, and against placebos. These are especially available in the professional market, like through the aesthetics market. 

You can also, when you buy online, you can look at a lot of these before-and-after studies or ask the company that you're considering from. Ask the representative if you're in a department store or a Sephora or Ulta if they have the studies that you could look at. Are they available online or do they have them in the store? 

We also need to make sure that we set the proper expectations. Keeping in mind that exosomes are communicating at a much deeper cellular level than regular plant extracts or most of our more traditional or older products, it may take longer to see results. So give it a good…

35:50 Trina Renea: You think you could see results faster with the exosomes?

35:54 Rebecca Gadberry: In some ways you can, like with hydration and barrier repair. Your skin is going to feel more hydrated within probably 48 to 72 hours. And your skin is going to feel more comfortable because of these within that same time period. 

But if you're looking for the age-correcting benefits, give it a good four to eight weeks to see full benefits. Make sure that you're applying the amount in the frequency that the directions contain. 

You also want to be careful of looking at the formulation itself. I find that exosomes are really good in gels or serums. I don't know how stable they are in emulsions because emulsions may destroy the membrane and release the contents. It depends upon the emulsifier. So, while we explore all of this, my suggestion, to be on the safe side, is to look at water-based serums and gels. 

And always look at how these products are stored. They should be in a dark, cool area, not under fluorescent lights or in a window. If they're on display, they shouldn't be out in the open. They should be kept in a cool area. 

37:28 Trina Renea: A dark container? Are they putting them in dark containers? 

37:30 Rebecca Gadberry: A dark container or a cabinet. Having a darker container or an opaque container, an amber or blue-colored glass, that also helps to protect them. And putting them in what we call an airless pump so that the air that collects at the top of the product, between the top of the container and the top of the product, which is technically called the headspace. If headspace is allowed to accumulate, a lot of air is in the container, these can deactivate. Exosomes can deactivate, as can other antioxidants. So, make sure that they're in a container that doesn't allow air to accrue. 

38:18 Trina Renea: Okay. There's a lot of, like because it's in the beginning stages, how to package them and stabilize them and keep them on a shelf or have to be refrigerated. I think they'll come up with, in time, ways to have them more stable in a product, right? 

38:41 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, that's what our jobs at the benches to do that. And there may be new packaging ideas. You remember ampoules? We used to use them all the time. 

38:48 Trina Renea: Yes. 

38:50 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, there's some products that are coming out, or some brands coming out with their products in ampoules. You buy like five to seven ampoules in a little box then break them open and use them. That's another way to make sure that they remain fresh and out of the air. 

39:10 Trina Renea: Interesting. Okay. So, this is Lizzy. So what is the future of plant exosomes? What do you think?

39:22 Trina Renea: That's our last question that we had. What do I think? I think that the future looks remarkably bright, if you don't mind the pun. We're going to see these for acne, for skin sensitivity. The eczema product will probably launch soon. I don't know what brand did it, so I can't really discuss it. I would if I could. 

We're going to see ways of using this exosome technology by manipulating the cell to make sure it's got what we absolutely want in there to get into the skin. We're going to take a look at increasingly customizing these things so that we can target specific cell groups in the skin. Like, we want to only focus on fibroblasts that produce collagen to reduce wrinkles. We only want to look at melanocytes to interrupt melanin production. We want to only look at keratinocytes in such a way that the immune cells in the body, which mature in the skin and then reenter the body through the circulation, that we're affecting the way that these immune cells mature.

Now, are these drug claims? They're all drug claims, so we're not going to be able to tell you exactly what they're doing. What we can tell you is by the benefits that you'll get. So, look for things like pore refinement, look for hydration. They're going to be blander, same-as-everybody-else type of claims, but the results are going to be stronger because of the exosomes. 

41:03 Trina Renea: I think also with brands, make sure that they're being transparent about their sourcing, their extraction methods, their clinical testing, that they're giving you all that. They're not just throwing the name on the bottle. That there's actually information on their website or they're talking about it, all the work they've put into it. 

41:26 Rebecca Gadberry: Yeah. Some companies like to keep that private. Whether you buy from them or not is up to you. I'm not saying that one is better than the other. I'm saying that the results are really important. 

Also, alluding to something you just brought up, is the sustainability of these materials. They're produced in what's called a circular economy. We can utilize these cells that produce the exosomes in different ways and produce the exosomes also, and we don't have to grow these cells in the ground. They can be grown in the lab even under processes like fermentation, which is what we use to make beer and wine. The same type of technology can be used to ferment these plant extracts and perhaps exosomes. 

42:26 Trina Renea: Okay. What about, like, what do you think is going to be the first target of exosomes for the skin right now that is going to come out? Is it going to be for pigmentation? Is it going to be for inflammation? 

42:46 Rebecca Gadberry: No. Like I said, they're already out on the market. There's been a slew of them added, especially in the professional market. I remember being at the big conference up in Sacramento for the professional aesthetics industry last year and there were probably seven or eight companies that had exosomes in their product. 

At that point, they were only talking about the exosome technology. They weren't really explaining what they did, but I noticed in reviewing them, because I walked the floor, in reviewing them, they were primarily going for anti-aging or age correction claims. The ones with the clinical studies, I don't know if they're out yet on skin brightening and acne and all of those, so look for them. 

But I think the very first thing, the lowest hanging fruit, as my husband says, is the age correcting category. It's also the biggest market. They're in there already.

43:53 Trina Renea: Right. So basically, plant exosomes are enhancing products and making them work better and doing the same things that we already have in our products, but just making it work faster and better is the goal with plant exosomes, would you say? 

44:13 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, and more efficiently and predictably. I think, ultimately, we're going to get much better results, more predictable results that apply to a broader range of skin than what we've been able to address in the past. 

44:34 Trina Renea: Okay. All right. I think this is a good intro into exosomes. We should release this as soon as possible. 

44:43 Rebecca Gadberry: I agree. 

44:45 Trina Renea: Then, as things progress, we will have future little, even mini episodes on what we're discovering and finding for you guys. 

Also, if you are interested in hearing more about the human exosomes, you can listen to our two episodes on that on Faciallyconscious.com. You can find them there in the search button. And also, check out our blog that we have on our website. 

45:12 Rebecca Gadberry: I'll write a blog post about this. We'll do a blog post in Substack so people can read about what we've talked about. I'll also put in some more information that we weren't able to talk about only due to length, not because we're prevented from talking about it. We're not being censored around it. 

45:31 Trina Renea: We'll tell you some secrets over there on the other side. 

45:34 Rebecca Gadberry: Yes, tune in. So, we'll write it down so nobody else knows. 

45:40 Trina Renea: Perfect. 

45:41 Rebecca Gadberry: Right. There won't be— oh, no, there will be a record.

45:47 Trina Renea: Well, I'm going to go shop for diamonds now, so…

45:50 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, I think that's a lovely idea. 

45:52 Trina Renea: It's my 20th anniversary. I've decided I'm going to buy a diamond necklace to wear, because while I do facials, I can't wear my wedding ring, so I never wear my wedding ring. So I'm going to buy a necklace. It represents my marriage of 20 years. 

46:10 Rebecca Gadberry: Are you buying it or is your husband buying it?

46:14 Trina Renea: I'll let him buy it with our money that we share, but I will pick it out.

46:19 Rebecca Gadberry: He's approving the allocation of funds. Is that what you're saying? 

46:23 Trina Renea: I will go find it and tell him where he can travel to pick it up. 

46:28 Rebecca Gadberry: Most excellent. And this is why your marriage has lasted so long. 

46:33 Trina Renea: Exactly. 

46:33 Rebecca Gadberry: Cooperation and teamwork.

46:36 Trina Renea: Yeah. Note to our listeners. If you want something, you just have to ask them for it. It works so much better. I'm like, “I think I need flowers.” He goes, “Okay,” and he goes and gets flowers. 

46:48 Rebecca Gadberry: Well, it depends on the husband, believe me. But mine is the same way. 

46:53 Trina Renea: Yes, if you tell them what you need, they'll do it. You can't expect them to always just read your mind to know what you want at the moment you want it. Ladies, listen up. 

47:06 Rebecca Gadberry: Okay. What about men?

47:07 Trina Renea: Rebecca, it was so good to see your face. You guys can't see her face, but she's so beautiful. 

47:14 Rebecca Gadberry: Oh, gosh. Yes. Okay. 

47:16 Trina Renea: All right. 

47:18 Rebecca Gadberry: Take care, everybody. If you have any questions about exosomes, feel free to send them our way at info@faciallyconscious.com. And have a wonderful rest of your day, whatever you're doing, wherever you are, and whatever time of year you are listening to this podcast. 

47:36 Trina Renea: All right. Take care. Bye.

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