Green, biocompatible, and biodegradable antioxidants represent a milestone in cosmetic and cosmeceutical applications. Lignin is the most abundant polyphenol in nature, recovered as a low-cost waste from the pulp and paper industry and biorefinery. This polymer is characterized by beneficial physical and chemical properties which are improved at the nanoscale level due to the emergence of antioxidant and UV shielding activities. Here we review the use of lignin nanoparticles in cosmetic and cosmeceutical applications, focusing on sunscreen and antiaging formulations. Advances in the technology for the preparation of lignin nanoparticles are described highlighting structure activity relationships.

The regulation of nervous and cardiovascular systems and some brain-related behaviors, such as stress, panic, anxiety, and depression, are strictly dependent on the levels of the main catecholamines of clinical interest, dopamine (DA), epinephrine (EP), and norepinephrine (NEP). Therefore, there is an urgent need for a reliable sensing device able to accurately monitor them in biological fluids for early diagnosis of the diseases related to their abnormal levels. In this paper, we present the first tyrosinase (Tyr)-based biosensor based on chitosan nanoparticles (ChitNPs) for total catecholamine (CA) detection in human urine samples. ChitNPs were synthetized according to an ionic gelation process and successively characterized by SEM and EDX techniques. The screen-printed graphene electrode was prepared by a two-step drop-casting method of: (i) ChitNPS; and (ii) Tyr enzyme. Optimization of the electrochemical platform was performed in terms of the loading method of Tyr on ChitNPs (nanoprecipitation and layer-by-layer), enzyme concentration, and enzyme immobilization with and without 1-ethyl-3-(3-dimethylaminopropyl)-carbodiimide (EDC) and N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) as cross-linking agents. The Tyr/EDC-NHS/ChitNPs nanocomposite showed good conductivity and biocompatibility with Tyr enzyme, as evidenced by its high biocatalytic activity toward the oxidation of DA, EP, and NEP to the relative o-quinone derivatives electrochemically reduced at the modified electrode. The resulting Tyr/EDC-NHS/ChitNPs-based biosensor performs interference-free total catecholamine detection, expressed as a DA concentration, with a very low LOD of 0.17 μM, an excellent sensitivity of 0.583 μA μM−1 cm−2, good stability, and a fast response time (3 s). The performance of the biosensor was successively assessed in human urine samples, showing satisfactory results and, thus, demonstrating the feasibility of the proposed biosensor for analyzing total CA in physiological samples.

In this work, we report on the development of a simple electrochemical immunosensor for the detection of D-dimer protein in human plasma samples. The immunosensor is built by a simple drop-casting procedure of chitosan nanoparticles (CSNPs) as biocompatible support, Protein A (PrA), to facilitate the proper orientation of the antibody sites to epitopes as a capture biomolecule, and the D-dimer antibody onto a carboxyl functionalized multi-walled carbon nanotubes screen printed electrode (MWCNTs-SPE). The CSNPs have been morphologically characterized by Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS) techniques. Successively, the electrochemical properties of the screen-printed working electrode after each modification step have been characterized by differential pulse voltammetry (DPV) and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The resulting MWCNTs-CSNPs-PrA-D-dimer Ab immunosensor displays an optimal and promising platform for antibody immobilization and specific D-dimer detection. DPV has been used to investigate the antigen/antibody interaction at different D-dimer concentrations. The proposed voltammetric immunosensor allowed a linear range from 2 to 500 μg L−1 with a LOD of 0.6 μg L−1 and a sensitivity of 1.3 μA L μg−1 cm−2. Good stability and a fast response time (5 s) have been reported. Lastly, the performance of the voltammetric immunosensor has been tested in human plasma samples, showing satisfactory results, thus attesting to the promising feasibility of the proposed platform for detecting D-dimer in physiological samples.

The overproduction of eumelanin leads to a panel of unaesthetic hyper-pigmented skin diseases, including melasma and age spots. The treatment of these diseases often requires the use of tyrosinase inhibitors, which act as skin whitening agents by inhibiting the synthesis of eumelanin, with harmful side effects. We report here that laccase from Trametes versicolor in association with a cocktail of natural phenol redox mediators efficiently degraded eumelanin from Sepia officinalis, offering an alternative procedure to traditional whitening agents. Redox mediators showed a synergistic effect with respect to their single-mediator counterpart, highlighting the beneficial role of the cocktail system. The pro-oxidant DHICA sub-units of eumelanin were degraded better than the DHI counterpart, as monitored by the formation of pyrrole-2,3,5-tricarboxylic acid (PTCA) and pyrrole-2,3-dicarboxylic acid (PDCA) degradation products. The most effective laccase-mediated cocktail system was successively applied in a two-component prototype of a topical whitening cream, showing high degradative efficacy against eumelanin.

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