A team of research scientists from the Avon Skincare Institute presented its latest findings on anti-aging skin care at last week’s Summer Conference of The American Academy of Dermatology.

Doctors John Lyga, Director of Skin Bioscience and Uma Santhanam, Director of Cell Biology and Clinical Efficacy explained that their team has solved a key piece of the skin aging puzzle; identifying that levels of key transporter protein, dynein, decline with age, causing an impairment to the transport of nutrients within skin cells and contributing to the visible signs of aging on the skin’s surface.

The team also looked at dynein’s role in autophagy, the process by which cells remove and recycle damaged components, discovering that not only does this activity decline with age and UV exposure but also that dynein plays a key role in the recycling process and therefore age-related drop in dynein levels could contribute to sub-optimal functioning of skin cells.