Skincare Made Simple

Kourtney Kardashian is a fan. Modern Family stars Sarah Hyland and Sofia Vergara are said to love it, too. But the origins of eXO Skin’s Bio.digital Perfection Moisturizer— the beauty industry’s newest anti-aging “it” product—are closer to home than they are to Hollywood. A lot closer, in fact.

The eXO Skin Simple skincare brand launched in 2016 out of Zen-Bio, a biotech lab located in the Research Triangle Park that conducts research using human tissue. The startup’s founders, sibling team Catherine Enright, eXO’s CEO, and Peter Pieraccini who heads up the line’s research and development division, found a way to harness Zen3 exosomes, tiny, inter-cellular messengers found in human biology, for cosmetic application.

“[RTP] is where scientific history is made and we wanted to be in the center of it,” Enright told Raleigh Magazine in an email. “Biotech is the future—finding that perfect blend of natural sources that have been tweaked for optimal functioning.” Enright added that she sees the Triangle “playing an increasingly larger role in the skincare and cosmetics industry.”

Perfection Moisturizer

Per eXO Skin’s website, exosomes “float like bubbles between cells,” and each is encoded with data that transfers from one cell to another, passing along nutrients and “instructions for mimicking the happy cell that started it all.” More than 150 million of these exosomes, which are harvested from adult human stem cells and processed in a centrifuge for purity and quality, go into every bottle of eXO’s three products: women’s and men’s moisturizers, and a body lotion. The exosomes are said to “sync skin cells to lock in hydration and radiance while facilitating self-repair to reduce the outward appearance of aging.”

Now, I’m in no position to tell you whether the science behind the eXO skincare line is legit. But I did use the Bio.digital Perfection moisturizer on my face twice a day for two weeks, and I was pretty pleased with the results.

The lightweight, lightly scented formula absorbs quickly and it brightened up my complexion, smoothed out fine lines around my eyes, reduced redness and kept blemishes at bay. The results, actually, were similar to what I’ve seen using products with the vitamin A derivative retinol, the gold standard ingredient in skincare and anti-aging. No surprise, the eXO formula does contain some vitamin A, as well as blue algae, sea lettuce, kelp, Irish moss, noni oil, kombu, Agascalm, grapeseed-coconut oil and vitamins C and E.

Unlike retinol, however, eXO (for me) is much less irritating.

Priced at $118, it’s definitely a beauty product for rich people, but one 1.7 ounce bottle of the face moisturizer should last you about two months. And, for the laziest beauty ritualists among us—my routine is cleanser, moisturizer, done—there’s no complicated sequence of eye creams, toners, serums and daytime/nighttime treatments involved with eXO, which is ideal— and also thrifty.

Moisturizer for Men

“We’ve all got busy lives, and I know for myself I want a simple, easy-to-use product,” said eXO co-founder Enright, adding that the brand is currently working on a product with SPF. “With eXO Skin Simple, we packed tons of powerful actives in addition to our Zen3 exosomes to make a streamlined product offer with the benefit of multiple products.”

Write to request samples of eXO Skin’s products via the “Contact Us” section of the company’s website: exoskinsimple.com