Integrating toxicology into cosmetic ingredient research and development

Toxicity assessment of new cosmetic ingredients is often relegated to the end of the research and development (R&D) cycle. This is an inefficient development scheme, since toxicity concerns often lead to restrictions on the type of cosmetic applications the ingredient can go into and can even lead to abandoning the ingredient. This paper presents a tiered approach for integrating toxicology into cosmetic ingredient R&D. The tiered approach is flexible allowing a company to make cost-efficient use of readily available resources. Integrating toxicity assessment of new cosmetic ingredients early in the R&D cycle would help avoid developing ingredients with limited or no market potential due to toxicity concerns.