¡Gran victoria! La UE prohíbe definitivamente la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos

ORIGINAL: Anima Naturalis

30 de enero del 2013.

Esta revolucionaria victoria significa que del 11 de marzo en adelante, cualquier persona que desee vender nuevos productos e ingredientes cosméticos en la UE no debe probarlos en animales en ninguna parte del mundo. La prohibición afecta a todos los cosméticos, incluyendo artículos de aseo y productos de belleza desde jabón a pasta de dientes.

Europa Press | AnimaNaturalis

The Body Shop es una de las pocas marcas de belleza que no se verá afectada por la prohibición, ya que siempre ha estado en contra de la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos.

La prohibición propuesta supone un fuerte mensaje para todo el mundo en apoyo de la belleza sin crueldad y en particular para países como China, que aún exigen pruebas animales para los cosméticos, con el fin de que se prohíban también. 

La consejera delegada de Cruelty Free International, Michelle Thew, dijo: "Este es un acontecimiento verdaderamente histórico y la culminación de más de 20 años decampaña. Ahora aplicaremos nuestra determinación y visión a una escala global para asegurar que el resto del mundo sigue este camino".

Paul McGreevy, Director de Valores International en The Body Shop rindió tributo a los clientes que han apoyado la campaña de la compañía en contra de la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos durante muchos años, y dijo: "Este gran logro en Europa es solo el cierre de un capítulo. El futuro de la belleza debe estar libre de crueldad".

En 1991, BUAV (fundador de Cruelty Free International) estableció una coalición europea de organizaciones de protección animal líderes en Europa (ECEAE) con el objetivo de terminar con el uso de las pruebas animales para cosméticos. Esto fue el inicio de una campaña pública y política de alto perfil en Europa que abarca más de 20 años.

En 1993, The Body Shop, la primera compañía de belleza en tomar medidas en contra de la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos, secundó la campaña reclutando el apoyo de sus clientes en Europa. Tres años más tarde, en 1996, la Dama Anita Roddick, fundadora de The Body Shop, se unió a miembros de la ECEAE y MPE para presentar una petición con 4 millones de firmas a la Comisión Europea.

En 2012, la BUAV fundó Cruelty Free International, la primera organización global dedicada a terminar con la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos en todo el mundo. The Body Shop junto con Cruelty Free International lanzó una nueva campaña internacional a la que se unió AnimaNaturalis, que hasta ahora ha conseguido que clientes de 55 países firmen una petición global que respalda el fin definitivo de la experimentación en animales con fines cosméticos.

Nueva campaña global: The Body Shop, AnimaNaturalis y Cruelty-Free International contra las pruebas en animales

Beatriz Rico se une a The Body Shop, AnimaNaturalis y Cruelty-Free International contra las pruebas en animales

In the Flesh: The Embedded Dangers of Untested Stem Cell Cosmetics

ORIGINAL: Scientific American

By Ferris Jabr

Unapproved procedures and skin care products endanger consumers and clinical research

Image: Credit: Nissim Benvenisty, via Wikimedia Commons

When cosmetic surgeon Allan Wu first heard the woman's complaint, he wondered if she was imagining things or making it up. A resident of Los Angeles in her late sixties, she explained that she could not open her right eye without considerable pain and that every time she forced it open, she heard a strange click—a sharp sound, like a tiny castanet snapping shut. After examining her in person at The Morrow Institute in Rancho Mirage, Calif., Wu could see that something was wrong: Her eyelid drooped stubbornly, and the area around her eye was somewhat swollen. Six and a half hours of surgery later, he and his colleagues had dug out small chunks of bone from the woman's eyelid and tissue surrounding her eye, which was scratched but largely intact. The clicks she heard were the bone fragments grinding against one another.

About three months earlier the woman had opted for a relatively new kind of cosmetic procedure at a different clinic in Beverly Hills—a face-lift that made use of her own adult stem cells. First, cosmetic surgeons had removed some the woman's abdominal fat with liposuction and isolated the adult stem cells within—a family of cells that can make many copies of themselves in an immature state and can develop into several different kinds of mature tissue. In this case the doctors extracted mesenchymal stem cells—which can turn into bone, cartilage or fat, among other tissues—and injected those cells back into her face, especially around her eyes. The procedure cost her more than $20,000, Wu recollects. Such face-lifts supposedly rejuvenate the skin because stem cells turn into brand-new tissue and release chemicals that help heal aging cells and stimulate nearby cells to proliferate.

During the face-lift her clinicians had also injected some dermal filler, which plastic surgeons have safely used for more than 20 years to reduce the appearance of wrinkles. The principal component of such fillers is calcium hydroxylapatite, a mineral with which cell biologists encourage mesenchymal stem cells to turn into bone—a fact that escaped the woman's clinicians. Wu thinks this unanticipated interaction explains her predicament. He successfully removed the pieces of bone from her eyelid in 2009 and says she is doing well today, but some living stem cells may linger in her face. These cells could turn into bone or other out-of-place tissues once again.

Dozens, perhaps hundreds, of clinics across the country offer a variety of similar, untested stem cell treatments for both cosmetic and medical purposes. Costing between $3,000 and $30,000, the treatments promise to alleviate everything from wrinkles to joint pain to autism. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has not approved any of these treatments and, with a limited budget, is struggling to keep track of all the unapproved therapies on the market. At the same time, pills, oils, creams and moisturizers that allegedly contain the right combination of ingredients to mobilize the body's resident stem cells, or contain chemicals extracted from the stem cells in plants and animals, are popping up in pharmacies and online. There's Stem Cell 100, for example, MEGA STEM and Apple Stem Cell Cloud Cream. Few of these cosmetics have been properly tested in published experiments, yet the companies that manufacture them say they may heal damaged organs, slow or reverse natural aging, restore youthful energy and revitalize the skin. Whether such cosmetics may also produce unintended and potentially harmful effects remains largely unexamined. The increasing number of untested and unauthorized stem cell treatments threaten both people who buy them and researchers hoping to conduct clinical trials for promising stem cell medicine.

When is a skin cream a drug?

So far, the FDA has only approved one stem cell treatment: a transplant of bone marrow stem cells for people with the blood cancer leukemia. Among the increasing number of unapproved stem cell treatments, some clearly violate the FDA's regulations whereas others may technically be legal without its approval. In July 2012, for example, the U.S. District Court upheld an injunction brought by the FDA against Colorado-based Regenerative Sciences to regulate just one of the company's several stem cell treatments for various joint injuries as an "unapproved biological drug product." The decision hinged on what constitutes "minimal manipulation" of cells in the lab before they are injected into patients. In the treatment that the FDA won the right to regulate, stem cells are grown and modified in the lab for several weeks before they are returned to patients; in Regenerative Sciences's other treatments, patients' stem cells are extracted and injected within a day or two. Regenerative Sciences now offers the legally problematic treatment at a Cayman Island facility.

Many stem cell cosmetics reside in a legal gray area. Unlike drugs and "biologics" made from living cells and tissues, cosmetics do not require premarket approval from the FDA. But stem cell cosmetics often satisfy the FDA's definitions for both cosmetics and drugs. In September 2012 the FDA posted a letter on its Web site warning Lancôme, a division of L'Oréal, that the way it describes its Genifique skin care products qualify the creams and serums as unapproved drugs: they are supposed to "boost the activity of genes," for example, and "improve the condition of stem cells." Other times the difference between needing or not needing FDA approval comes down to linguistic nuance—the difference between claiming that a product does something or appears to do something.

Personal Cell Sciences, in Eatontown, N.J., sells some of the more sophisticated stem cell–based cosmetics: an eye cream, moisturizer and serum infused with chemicals derived from a consumer's own stem cells. According to its website and marketing materials, these products help "make skin more supple and radiant," "reduce the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles around the eyes and lips," "improve cellular renewal" and "stimulate cell turnover for renewed texture and tone." In exchange for $3,000, Personal Cell Sciences will arrange for a participating physician to vacuum about 60 cubic centimeters (one quarter cup) of a customer's fat from beneath his or her skin and ship it on ice to American CryoStem Corp. in Red Bank, N.J., where laboratory technicians isolate and grow the customer's mesenchymal stem cells to around 30 million strong. Half these cells are frozen for storage; from the other half, technicians harvest hundreds of different kinds of exuded growth factors and cytokines—molecules that help heal damaged cells and encourage cells to divide, among other functions. These molecules are mixed with many other ingredients—including green tea extract, caffeine and vitamins—to create the company's various "U Autologous" skin care products, which are then sold back to the consumer for between $400 and $800. When the customer wants a refill, technicians thaw some of the frozen cells, collect more cytokines and produce new bottles of cream.

In an unpublished safety trial sponsored by Personal Cell Sciences, Frederic Stern of the Stern Center for Aesthetic Surgery in Bellevue, Wash., and his colleagues monitored 19 patients for eight weeks as they used the U Autologous products on the left sides of their faces. A computer program meant to objectively analyze photos of the volunteers' faces measured an average of 25.6 percent reduction in the volume of wrinkles on the treated side of the face. Analysis of tissue biopsies revealed increased levels of the protein elastin, which helps keep skin taut, and no signs of unusual or cancerous cell growth.

Only skin deep?

Supposedly, the primary active ingredients in the U Autologous skin care products are the hundreds of different kinds of cytokines they contain. Cytokines are a large and diverse family of proteins that cells release to communicate with and influence one another. Cytokines can stimulate cell division or halt it; they can suppress the immune system or provoke it; they can also change a cell's shape, modulate its metabolism and force it to migrate from one location to another like a cowboy corralling cattle. Researchers have only named and characterized some of the many cytokines that stem cells secrete. Some of these molecules certainly help repair damaged cells and promote cell survival. Others seem to be involved in the development of tumors. In fact, some recent evidence suggests that the cytokines released by mesenchymal stem cells can trigger tumors by accelerating the growth of dormant cancer cells. Personal Cell Sciences does not pick and choose among the cytokines exuded by its customers' stem cells—instead, it dumps them all into its skin care products.

Based on the available evidence so far, topical creams containing cytokines from stem cells pose far less risk of cancer than living stem cells injected beneath the skin. But scientists do not yet know enough about stem cell cytokines to reliably predict everything they will do when rubbed into the skin; they could interact with healthy skin cells in a completely unexpected way, just as the unintended interplay between calcium hydroxylapatite and stem cells produced bones in the Los Angeles woman's eye. Stern acknowledges that unusual tissue growth is a concern for any treatment based on stem cells and the chemicals they release. "Down the line, we want to continue watching that," he says. Unlike many other clinics, he and his colleagues have been keeping tabs on their patients through regular follow-ups. John Arnone, CEO of American CryoStem and founder of Personal Cell Sciences, says the fact that U Autologous skin care products contain such a diversity of cytokines does not bother him: "I've seen worse things out there. I've been putting this formulation for almost a year on myself prior to the study. I'm the best guinea pig here."

Beyond the considerable risks to consumers, unapproved stem cell treatments also threaten the progress of basic research and clinical trials needed to establish safe stem cell therapies for serious illnesses. By harvesting stem cells, subsequently nourishing them in the lab and transplanting them back inside the human body, scientists hope to improve treatment for a variety of medical conditions, including heart failure, neurodegenerative disorders like Parkinson's, and spinal cord injuries—essentially any condition in which the body needs new cells and tissues. Researchers are investigating many stem cell therapies in ongoing, carefully controlled clinical trials. Some of the principal questions entail which of the many kinds of stem cells to use; how to safely deliver stem cells to patients without stimulating tumors or the growth of unwanted tissues; and how to prevent the immune system from attacking stem cells provided by a donor. Securing funding for such research becomes all the more difficult if shortcuts taken by private clinics and cosmetic manufacturers—and the subsequent botched procedures and unanticipated consequences—imprint a stigma on stem cells.

"Many of us are super excited about stem cells, but at same time we have to be really careful," says Paul Knoepfler, a cell biologist at the University of California, Davis, who regularly blogs about the regulation of stem cell treatments. "These aren't your typical drugs. You can stop taking a pill and the chemicals go away. But if you get stem cells, most likely you will have some of those cells or their effects for the rest of your life. And we simply don't know everything they are going to do."

Modelo artificial para medir la efectividad de los cosméticos.

ORIGINAL: Universia

06/09/2012

El grupo de Farmacogenética del Departamento de Farmacia de la Universidad Nacional en Bogotá desarrolló un modelo que permite medir algunas de las bondades que ofrecen estos productos.

Imagen suministrada

Es tan certero el prototipo que la Federación Farmacéutica Sudamericana acaba de otorgarle el primer premio en innovación cosmética, en el marco de su congreso número XV. Una distinción que obedece a su gran sustento científico, que permite demostrar si tienen o no funcionalidad como antiedad y calcular la seguridad de cada insumo.

Según el profesor Fabio Aristizábal, director de la investigación, este ejercicio estuvo motivado por la preocupación que surge de que “en el mercado cosmético, aparentemente todo es válido”. Y tiene que ver con un desarrollo molecular que, básicamente, utiliza un método de seguimiento de expresión génica, mediante una reacción que se le conoce como retrotranscripción y amplificación molecular.

“Esto permite comparar, en cultivos celulares, cómo un conjunto de materiales que han sido sometidos a tratamiento y otros que no expresan moléculas que fortalecen la piel. Asimismo, hace posible identificar de qué manera varia la expresión de los genes; y así, dependiendo de su tipo y de su función, se puede decir cuáles son sus acciones”, asegura.

A través de un sistema in vitro, se examinaron dos extractos de piper (una planta de la familia de las piperáceas). Uno resultó ser muy efectivo estimulando genes asociados con colágenos, pero, a su vez, inhibiendo los que desarman la matriz extracelular: las metaloproteazas. En cambio, el otro extracto no. Para la prueba fueron seleccionados doce genes que parecían ser los más significativos.

“Se evidenció de manera contundente, por medio de estos análisis, cuál tiene moléculas funcionales (antiarrugas y antiedad en general) y si realmente es efectivo o simplemente es carreta”, asegura.

Cabe anotar que, en el mundo, lo que se impone en materia de análisis de estos tipos de productos es el uso de modelos que no empleen animales. Esto resulta ser de provecho desde el punto de vista ético. Pues estos sistemas utilizan células que no afectan individuos y que se pueden estar renovando de manera continua.

El investigador señala que este tipo de modelos —en los que no se usan animales de laboratorio, sino células derivadas de humanos—permiten establecer de manera concluyente que la función existe. “Es un modelo rápido para determinar efectividad”, dice.

Igualmente, indica que se puede analizar si la población celular es afectada por los tratamientos o muere, pues también se pueden contar las células y dar una alarma en caso de que alguna de estas materias primas tenga cierto efecto tóxico.

Así, sin duda se trata de modelos muy útiles para probar la seguridad, pues, aunque no pareciera, también en esta industria existen riesgos. “Hay que recordar que en la piel uno no se debe aplicar cualquier cosa”, asevera.

En la actualidad, se pueden utilizar, por ejemplo, fibroblastos (las células que están encima de la piel) o queratinocitos (células predominantes en la epidermis). Asimismo, se puede trabajar sobre una piel artificial que fabrican con una matriz tridimensional y tiene células de diferente origen (fibroblastos y queratinocitos), sobre las cuales se pueden medir este tipo de genes.

Con respecto al futuro, el profesor Aristizábal cuenta que han ofrecido el modelo a la industria. En efecto, confirma que existe un proyecto aprobado dentro de un consorcio en cosmética y apoyado por Colciencias, en el cual se van a implementar algunos de estos métodos, a fin de desarrollar productos antienvejecimiento, alisadores de piel, entre otros.

El proyecto, financiado por el grupo y la División de Investigación de la sede, estuvo a cargo de Catalina Amaya y Catalina Acevedo (químicas farmacéuticas) y de Lina María Escobar (magíster en Biotecnología).

Compañía de cosméticos combate la experimentación con animales mediante "La tortura" de seres humanos

ORIGINAL: Ecouterre

Cosméticos Lush ha asociado con la Sociedad Humanitaria de los Estados Unidos y la Humane Society International para poner en marcha la campaña mundial más grande de la historia para poner fin a las pruebas de cosméticos en animales. Sin embargo, el proveedor de productos para el cuidado de la piel no se detuvo allí. Para subrayar su punto, LUSH convirtió la vitrina de su tienda de Regent Street en Londres en un cuadro de la crueldad, donde la artista de performance Traides Jacqueline "sufrió" 10 horas de alimentación forzada, inyecciones de líquidos, y otros procedimientos de tortura empleados en forma regular por la industria de la belleza. 

No era un espectáculo agradable, ni era la intención de cosméticos LUSH que lo fuera.

Aunque los ensayos con animales se prohibieron en toda Europa hace casi dos décadas, la venta de los animales los productos ensayados todavía se permite en el Reino Unido y otros países.

En los Estados Unidos, la ley federal exige a las empresas asegurar que sus productos son seguros, pero no requiere la experimentación con animales.

A pesar de las alternativas establecidas, sin embargo, un número de fabricantes continúa probando nuevos ingredientes cosméticos en animales.

"La industria de la belleza continúa la experimentación con animales innecesaria y es hora de que deje de hacerlo" dice Kate Willett, director de toxicología regulatoria, evaluación de riesgos y alternativas de HSUS. "Los consumidores no tienen mucho conocimiento de que algunos champús y lápices de labios todavía implican envenenamiento químico de animales como conejos y ratones. La ciencia nos ha ido más allá de esto y no hay lugar para las pruebas de cosméticos en animales en la sociedad moderna."

"La lucha contra la experimentación con animales" es la campaña de parte de la conciencia, la petición de parte. A medida que la iniciativa se lanza en 48 países y más de 700 tiendas de LUSH en los Estados Unidos, Canadá, Europa, India, Australia, Nueva Zelanda, Corea del Sur, y Rusia, los miembros del público se les insta a firmar peticiones nacionales en las tiendas de LUSH y en línea para exigir el fin a la práctica anticuada.

"Los animales no deberían tener que depender de los códigos voluntarios de conducta, sino que debe ser protegida por las leyes que obligan a todos los sólidos que las empresas adopten métodos humanitarios para llevar sus productos al mercado", dice Brandi Salas, director de la campaña del Norte de América de Lush.

¿Porqué deberia apoyar la campaña aquí?

Vaquitas Verdes (Little Green Cows)

ORIGINAL: IEET

Rachel Armstrong

Mar 27, 2012

The world is alight with algae fever.

Rachel Armstrong

In this age of deep ecological design aspirations, the range of speculative design projects based on algae technology is growing. Algae are imagined to provide a whole range of solutions, from

• energy-producing architectural towers, to 
• lights, 
• burgers, 
• skin care products, 
• animal feed, 
• drug factories and 
• bioplastics. 

It finally appears that the world is turning green.

Literally.

Algae, simple photosynthetic plants that live in water, are among some of the oldest living organisms on earth.

Most species can only be seen with a microscope, but others can form dense mats of vegetation or large underwater forests. During the Archean period, between 3.9 and 3.5 billion years ago, blue-green algae* set the preconditions for modern life by changing the earth’s atmosphere, which was choked with poisonous gases, and turning it into an oxygen-rich environment. Their modern-day descendants can use a range of pigments to harvest specific wavelengths of light to form solid plant matter, or ‘biomass’, by using sunlight and carbon dioxide to produce fuel, water and oxygen.

Indeed, the ability of algae to fix carbon is such that they’ve become the technology of choice for carbon capture. We already know that they can make a large-scale impact. In fact, algae are so relentless, work so quickly and on such a scale that up until this moment in time they’ve been regarded in an extremely negative manner. Algae have been called by many names, most of them not at all complementary: Weeds, blight, bloom, deadly foam and literally, the scum of the earth. Despite their current reprieve as a possible solution to escalating carbon dioxide levels, there are still more products on the market designed to kill algae than ways to fruitfully use them.

An aquatic weed harvester in action at Lily Creek Lagoon, near Kununurra, Western Australia.

Designing with algae is an opportunity to creatively engage their technological potential in new ways, since they are not machines. Yet the modern synthetic biology industry, which takes a rational design and engineering approach to living systems, exists within an industrial framework. The model for the production process is the brewing industry. In a brewery, a living system, yeast, is introduced into a mechanical container where it performs the function of a tiny ‘machine’ that makes alcohol using natural raw ingredients. The container walls have no connection to the outside environment, so the yeast is ecologically ‘imprisoned’ and disconnected from nature. The process is also invisible to observers and the final product is assessed as a commodity rated purely in economic terms as a manufactured ‘product’. Its value is rated in comparison to the equivalent of a barrel of crude oil. It is not sold according to any other benefits of the process that relate to human experience.

This is a huge missed opportunity for synthetic biology to reach new customers and audiences. Biological systems do not just make useful products, but also offer significant environmental and people-centered benefits, which are neglected in the industrial approach. For example, algae bioreactors that use sunlight to fix carbon dioxide for the production of biofuels, which range from alcohol to oils, can also be designed as social experiences. IBA Hamburg promises the reality of a more integrated ecological design solution in its amazing new building facades for novel housing types.

So, rather than thinking of the algae as being ‘machines’ we could perhaps think of them as being ‘little green cows’. Imagine the algae bioreactors, which are simply aquariums, as a field in which oil-producing algae can graze on sunlight and carbon dioxide. These algae are circulated around the tank so that they have plenty to eat.

They are eventually moved into a milking shed in the form of a copper pipe, which gives the little green cows a tiny shock as they pass through, in a process called ‘cracking’. Absolutely no cows are hurt in the process, and by the end of a week a window-sized bioreactor will have produced a buttery layer of biofuel, which floats to the top of the collecting vessel like cream in a bottle of milk. The protein-rich waste can be recycled into soil fertilizer, or compressed into bricks for building with.

Many of the design issues raised in algae-based solutions prompt ecological thinking and approaches that are more frequently associated with creating ponds, gardens, farming and parks than making gadgets. So, thinking beyond the machine metaphor creates new ways of experiencing technology, and invites biology into our living spaces, which brings added benefits. Life is more robust, more adaptable and more surprising than machines can ever be. Uniquely, it also has the capacity to deal with ‘the unknown’ – something that simply cannot be modeled and programmed into mechanical systems. Consequently, when we view biology as being qualitatively different from machines, science and design are presented with new opportunities in ways of making and working with biology. Next nature explores this creative interface between biology, technology and humans, and inspires design solutions that are greater than the sum of their parts – which really is a lot more delightful than watching the inner workings of an oil refinery.

* Once considered true algae, blue-green algae, or cyanobacteria, are now classified as bacteria.

Image #1: via Celsias.

Image #2: Algae adrift in the interior of a bioreactor. Photo by author.