Abstract
The term cosmeceutical comes from the combination of cosmetics and pharmaceuticals, which has been emerged due to the CPC’s market’s (Cosmetics and Personal Care) necessity of combining body and skin care with products that has the usage of bioactive ingredients, ensuring a more sustainable development with a new kind of biotechnology. Regarding this idea, this project consisted on studying the usage of a bacterial cellulose (BC) producing bacteria, Glucanacetobacter hansenii, which has been cultivated in a media made out of juice from tropical fruit residue, used as a plant alternative for the production of a BC with beneficial characteristics for the skincare. The tropical fruit, with its enzymatic and non-enzymatic sites and its high nutrient and minerals content, contributes for the prevention of free radicals of the skin. Besides from serving as a support for incorporation of the active principles of tropical fruit, BC has high water activity when applied to the skin, helping to retain its natural moisture. For the experiments, the microorganism was cultivated on eleven different cultivation media, which were modified from the standard media HS (Hestrim-Schramm). The working media was selected according to its cost benefit and BC’s growth yield. The experiments were performed after 10 days of the bacteria’s cultivation on the media cited previously. With the obtained BC pellicle, both its water activity and ascorbic acid were quantified, and its mechanical properties were determined. A BC face mask was also constructed. It can be concluded that the addition of tropical fruit residue in the bacteria’s cultivation media, grants ideal skin hydration characteristics to the BC pellicle, enabling the development of a new biotechnological product for the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industries.
