SKIN CARE Anti-aging cream offers personalized treatment

KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Customize, customize, customize has been the mantra for the 21st century.
We wear our initials on clothes and design athletic shoes online. We personalize our houses, weddings and food (hold the butter sauce, and skip the cilantro, puh-leeze). Toyota even offers consumers POD ("personalization on demand"), an automobile with you-asked-for-it features like front seats that can rotate to face the back.
But now here comes the ultimate sales ploy in personalization.
It's an anti-aging skin treatment cream presumably based on your own DNA. It's offered by the New York-based company Lab21, and since its introduction in December, response has been phenomenal, says spokeswoman Mai Lin.
How it's done
It all starts with a cotton swab that is swept across the inside of your cheek. The company sends the DNA sample to a genome laboratory along with your answers to a 21-question quiz. The laboratory tailors a cream of 50 to 60 ingredients.
The technicians look at such factors as the breakdown of collagen, which is the protein below the skin that causes wrinkling as it loses elasticity and your propensity for sun aging. The cream is three times more effective than off-the-shelf skin products, says Nathaniel Benson, Lab21 president and founder. For $250, you get 1.7 ounces.
Doctors are skeptical, The Wall Street Journal says, and want to see more research. No published data so far show it can prevent aging.
The line is carried at some Saks Fifth Avenue stores, but you can also order an at-home DNA test. For more information, call (877) MY-LAB21, or log on to www.lab21.com.