Walk into the beauty aisle right now and apparently your lips need a chemistry degree.
Peptides. Exosomes. Marine actives. PDRN—which sounds very scientific until someone tells you it’s the ingredient behind the “salmon sperm” headlines. Ceramides. Retinols. Antioxidants. Every few months, there seems to be another ingredient we’re all supposed to immediately need.
But here’s the thing: new doesn’t necessarily mean better. And an ingredient getting a lot of attention on TikTok doesn’t mean it suddenly has decades of research behind it.
When we started developing Apposé Lip TX, we wanted to understand what actually mattered in a lip treatment—not what happened to be having a moment. That sent us down a very deep ingredient rabbit hole.
Here’s what we learned.
First, Your Lips Are Different From the Rest of Your Face
We spend a lot of time—and money—taking care of the skin on our faces, but lips are playing by a slightly different set of rules.
Lips are thinner than facial skin. They have no oil glands producing which means they dry out quickly! Add dry airplanes, sun, wind, air conditioning, heating, coffee, lipstick and everything else we put our lips through in a normal day, and suddenly that little tube rolling around at the bottom of your handbag has a fairly important job.
Which brings us to antioxidants.
Astaxanthin: The Ingredient We Couldn’t Stop Talking About
If you haven’t heard of astaxanthin yet, you probably will.
Astaxanthin is an amazing, naturally deep-red antioxidant. It's made by cold-water microalgae. It's upwards of 65 times stronger than vitamin C...🤯 It also happens to be the pigment that works its way through the marine food chain and gives wild salmon its pink color.
Interesting? Yes.
But what got our attention wasn’t the origin story. It was the research.
Astaxanthin has been studied for decades for its antioxidant activity. Comparative laboratory research has found particularly strong activity and human research has also explored its use in skin health.
In other words, this isn’t an ingredient invented for this year’s beauty trend.
And because lips have less of their own natural protection, antioxidants make a lot of sense in a formula designed to be used throughout the day.
There is another lovely side effect: astaxanthin has a naturally warm pigment. That helps give a thoughtfully formulated lip treatment a subtle hint of warmth rather than making it completely clear.
No lipstick commitment required.
The Least Exciting Ingredient Might Actually Be the Most Important
We all love an impressive active ingredient. Unfortunately, the ingredient with the best PR isn’t necessarily doing most of the work.
The base makes up the majority of a lip treatment. It’s what carries everything else, affects how the product feels and helps determine how well the formula protects against moisture loss.
Most lip-product bases fall into a few broad categories.
Plant-Based Oils and Butters
Think shea, cocoa, coconut, jojoba, sunflower and similar ingredients.
They can feel beautiful and absolutely have a place in lip care. But plant oils can actually oxidize your lips, and different botanical ingredients come with different sensitivity considerations. They can also have issues with longevity (meaning they can go bad quickly). That matters when you’re also trying to protect delicate active ingredients in the same formula.
Animal-Derived Waxes and Oils
Beeswax and lanolin are common examples. Lanolin is a known contact allergen for some people, while bee-derived ingredients can occasionally create sensitivity issues depending on the individual and the material.
Petrolatum
Not sexy. Not new. Extremely good at its job.
Petrolatum has a very long history in dermatology and is recommended by the American Academy of Dermatology for dry, chapped lips. Its biggest advantage is simple: it creates an effective occlusive barrier that dramatically reduces water loss.
It’s also chemically stable, which makes it a useful base when you’re trying to carry and protect other ingredients.
Sometimes boring wins.
And While We’re Here: Why Does Some Lip Balm Grab Your Hair?
This may be one of my biggest lip-product annoyances.
You put something on your lips. A gust of wind happens. Suddenly half your hair is attached to your mouth.
A lot of that comes down to the balance of three types of moisturizing ingredients:
Humectants attract water. Glycerin and HA (hyaluronic acid) are common examples. Effective? Yes. They can also contribute to tackiness depending on the formula.
Emollients soften and smooth the surface.
Occlusives create a protective layer that helps reduce water loss and generally feel more cushioning than sticky.
If you’re someone who cannot stand a sticky lip product, look for language like non-tacky, non-sticky, cushioning or comfort finish.
Or use my highly scientific test: put some on your hand, wait a minute and touch a strand of hair to it.
If your hair comes with you, I have questions.
What are peptides?
Peptides are short chains of amino acids, and some have legitimate research behind them. You’ll see different types used in skincare to support claims around collagen, delivery of minerals and visible signs of aging.
They’re not nonsense.
They’re also not magic.
The research is all over the place on the specific peptide, formulation and claim. Some of the marketing around peptides has moved faster than the proof. Probably a wait-and-see situation.
Compare that with antioxidants such as vitamins C and E, which have been researched for decades.
We aren’t anti-new ingredient. We’re anti-adding-an-ingredient-because-it-looks-good-on-the-front-of-the-box.
There’s a difference.
Okay, We Have to Talk About Salmon Sperm
Because apparently this is where beauty has taken us.
The actual ingredient behind the headlines is PDRN, or polydeoxyribonucleotides (say that 5 times fast), a mixture of DNA fragments that can be derived from salmon milt.
There is some legitimate research around injectable PDRN in clinical settings, particularly in areas such as wound healing and tissue regeneration.
The important word there is injectable.
Putting an ingredient into the skin and putting it on top of intact skin are very different things. Topical PDRN still raises questions around penetration, stability and the amount of independent long-term research supporting its use in cosmetic products.
Interesting? Absolutely.
Proven enough that we needed to put it in Lip TX? No. Is this just a fad? Maybe.
And Then There Are Exosomes
Exosomes are tiny vesicles released by cells that carry things like proteins, lipids and RNA. They are the subject of some interesting medical research.
Beauty marketing, however, has a habit of taking “interesting area of emerging research” and turning it into “you need this immediately.”
There are still unresolved questions around the delivery and stability of topical exosome products, and the FDA has issued consumer warnings regarding unapproved exosome products marketed for medical uses.
Again: promising research doesn’t automatically equal proven topical beauty ingredient.
We’ll watch the science. Wait-and-see? Absolutely.
So, What Should Actually Be in a Lip Treatment?
After all that research, our philosophy became surprisingly simple.
Choose ingredients because they have a reason to be there.
Look for a stable base that helps prevent moisture loss. Look for antioxidants with established research behind them. Look for ingredients that support the lip barrier. And be skeptical of formulas where the buzziest ingredient gets enormous billing on the front of the package but barely makes an appearance in the actual formula. We're skeptical of anything that hasn't been researched for at least a decade. Otherwise we would put it in one of our products.
New isn’t bad.
Old isn’t automatically good.
Evidence matters.
How We Applied That to Apposé Lip TX
This is where all of that research eventually led us.
Apposé Lip TX was formulated around an antioxidant-rich, barrier-supporting approach, including astaxanthin, fucoxanthin, stable oil-soluble vitamin C and tocopherol, alongside rosehip and sea buckthorn seed oils, shea butter and a petrolatum base.
We wanted something that protected and hydrated but didn’t feel like traditional sticky lip gloss. Something we could wear alone, under lip color or over it. Something worthy of living in the handbag instead of disappearing into the bathroom drawer with the other 17 lip products we’ve somehow accumulated.
And no, we didn’t add PDRN, exosomes or peptides simply because they’re having a moment. We don't do fads.
We made the choices we could stand behind.
Because for us, a $48 lip treatment should do more than have a good ingredient story.
You should actually want to use it.
Apposé Lip TX. Arrive Ready.
A Few Questions We Had Along the Way
What’s the most important ingredient in a lip treatment?
Technically, it may not be an “active” at all. The base makes up most of the formula and plays an enormous role in how the product feels, protects against moisture loss and carries the ingredients around it.
Are newer skincare ingredients bad?
Of course not. Every established ingredient was new once. We simply think newer ingredients should earn their claims through good research rather than great marketing.
Can peptides and antioxidants be used together?
Yes. They aren’t inherently incompatible. The more useful question is whether every ingredient in a particular formula is there for a meaningful reason.
How can I tell whether an expensive lip product is worth it?
Turn the package around. Look at the ingredient list—not just the claims on the front. Consider the base, where the highlighted actives appear in the ingredient list, the research behind them and whether the overall formulation makes sense.
Then there’s the final test:
Do you actually reach for it?
Because the most impressive formula in the world isn’t doing much for your lips from the bottom of a drawer.
Sources
https://www.nutrex-hawaii.com/blogs/learn/the-astaxanthin-difference
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6562539/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22428137/
https://www.jaad.org/article/S0190-9622(23)01107-6/abstract
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S009167491501194X
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34897953/
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/28535505/