RoC Skincare is working to recruit 30 pairs of adult female identical twins aged 40 and older in the United States for the next phase of a clinical study that pairs its Patented Clinical Retinol regimen with wearable biometric tracking. The company said the expanded 12-week study follows a pilot that tested whether identical twins could provide a clearer model for studying visible skin aging.
Art Pellegrino, RoC’s chief scientific officer, said the pilot was intended to prove the model rather than measure how much skin aging comes from genes versus lifestyle. He said that when two people begin with the same genetic blueprint, differences between them are harder to attribute to genetics, making it easier to see what the retinol is doing on the skin. Pellegrino said the pilot answered that question affirmatively.
Identical twins share DNA and much of their early environment, so lifestyle and environmental factors become likelier explanations when their skin ages differently. RoC describes identical twins as about as close as researchers can get to a natural control.
In the pilot, Pellegrino said twins in the placebo group had similar or worse signs of aging at the end of the study, while twins in the treatment group showed as much as or more than 20% improvement in four weeks.
Why twins and wearables
The expanded study will ask participants to use the regimen for 12 weeks and wear an Oura Ring, a wearable device that tracks health and wellness metrics throughout the day. The ring captures sleep, stress, heart rate, heart rate variability and temperature trends.
Because RoC cannot guarantee that twins will have identical external influences such as sun exposure or diet, it is recruiting twins with similar levels of environmental damage wherever possible and tracking sleep and stress closely. The company expects the combination of genetic control and lifestyle tracking to help quantify external stressors and their impact on skin condition.
That design is meant to allow comparisons within each pair. If one twin sleeps poorly or reports more stress, researchers can examine whether her skin responds differently to the regimen than her sister’s. RoC also plans to look at whether weeks of poor sleep line up with lower hydration readings, or whether the twin with lower stress sees fine lines improve faster.
The company is also interested in the reverse question: whether participants who see visible skin improvements also feel less stressed. RoC’s standard clinical skin measures evaluate signs of aging through expert grading, digital photography, corneometer readings and subject self-assessment.
RoC expects results from the twin study by mid-2027. Pellegrino said the findings will shape how the company develops products for skin longevity and designs future clinical studies, including research into what RoC calls skin span, or how long skin keeps looking its best.