RoC Skincare has completed a pilot clinical study testing its Patented Clinical Retinol on adult female identical twins, combining biometric data collected by Oura Rings with conventional clinical skin measures. The brand says the twin model proved workable and is now recruiting for a larger phase.
Art Pellegrino, RoC's chief scientific officer, said identical twins give researchers something close to a natural control. Because they share DNA and much of their early environment, differences in the way their skin ages are harder to attribute to genetics, making lifestyle and environmental factors the likelier explanation. He said the pilot was mainly about proving the model and finding out whether identical twins could offer a more precise way to study what drives visible skin aging; the answer, he said, was yes.
The pilot also produced early efficacy signals. Pellegrino said twins in the placebo group showed similar or worse signs of aging at the end of the study, while twins in the treatment group saw as much as, or more than, 20% improvement in just four weeks. The size of the pilot group was not disclosed, and the company presented the finding as a summary rather than a full dataset.
The next phase aims to recruit 30 pairs of identical twin women aged 40 and older living in the US, who will use the regimen for 12 weeks. Pellegrino said the focused group is intended to give cleaner data to build on, and RoC frames the work as one stage in a longer research program on extending "skin span" — how long skin keeps looking its best. The brand expects results from the twin study by mid-2027.
Throughout the study, participants are asked to wear an Oura Ring, a wearable device that tracks health and wellness metrics through the day, capturing variation in biometric data such as 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 RoC cannot guarantee that twins 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 during the study. With genetics effectively held constant, the brand expects to quantify how external stressors relate to changes in each participant's skin. Pellegrino offered examples: whether weeks of poor sleep line up with lower hydration readings, or whether the twin with lower stress levels sees her fine lines improve faster. RoC is also interested in the reverse question — whether participants who see visible improvement in their skin report feeling less stressed.
Skin changes are assessed through expert grading, digital photography, corneometer readings and participant self-assessment, the company's standard clinical measures for signs of skin aging.
Pellegrino acknowledged that the pilot did not try to measure how much skin aging comes from genes versus lifestyle, and said that is what the expanded study is for. The findings will also be shaped by the study's design and its size, and by the brand's role as sponsor of the research. RoC says what it learns will inform how it develops products aimed at skin longevity and how it designs clinical studies going forward.