RoC Skincare is moving into the next phase of a clinical program that tests its Patented Clinical Retinol on identical female twins, pairing skin measurements with biometric data collected from Oura Rings. The brand plans to recruit 30 pairs of adult female identical twins aged 40 and older living in the United States, each following a 12-week regimen.
The plan builds on a pilot study that RoC says validated the twin model. Art Pellegrino, chief scientific officer at RoC Skincare, said the pilot was designed to establish whether identical twins could offer a more precise way to study what drives visible skin aging, and that the answer was yes.
In that pilot, twins in the placebo group showed similar or worse signs of aging by the end of the study, while those in the treatment group saw improvements of 20% or more within four weeks, according to Pellegrino.
Why twins act as a control
The approach rests on shared genetics. Identical twins carry the same DNA and much of the same early environment, so differences in how their skin ages are harder to attribute to heredity. Pellegrino described identical twins as about as close as researchers get to a natural control: when their skin ages differently, lifestyle and environment become the more likely explanation.
The pilot did not attempt to quantify how much skin aging stems from genes versus lifestyle. That is the aim of the expanded study, which is meant to examine how daily factors such as sleep and stress change outcomes when genetics are held constant.
Throughout the study, participants are asked to wear an Oura Ring, a wearable device that tracks health and wellness metrics across the day. The rings capture variation in sleep, stress, heart rate, heart rate variability and temperature trends.
Pellegrino said wearables are opening an opportunity across the industry to factor in how people live when recommending skin care. Because external influences such as sun exposure or diet cannot be guaranteed identical, RoC is recruiting twins with similar levels of environmental damage where possible and tracking lifestyle factors closely for the duration.
Connecting lifestyle data to skin readings
Combining lifestyle tracking with the genetic control offered by twins is expected to let researchers quantify external stressors and their effect on skin condition. If one twin sleeps poorly or reports more stress, the team can examine whether her skin responds differently to the regimen than her sister's. That could show, for example, whether weeks of poor sleep line up with lower hydration readings, or whether the twin with lower stress sees fine lines improve faster. RoC is also interested in the reverse question: whether participants who see visible skin improvements also feel less stressed.
Skin changes are assessed using RoC's standard clinical measures: expert grading, digital photography, corneometer readings and participant self-assessment.
Pellegrino said what the study learns will shape how RoC develops products aimed at skin longevity, or how long skin keeps looking its best, and how the brand designs its clinical studies going forward. RoC expects results from the twin study by mid-2027.