This is our long-awaited first issue; we hope to bring you a new issue every month, full of useful information related to topical formulations. In this issue, we begin our project of providing consumers and formulators with clear explanations of at least one important ingredient and technology every month. For January 2005, our focus is on cosmeceuticals; to aid our discussion of what cosmeceuticals are and how they function, our ingredient of the month is phosphatidylcholine and our technology of the month is liposomes. Please read our feature article to discover how these three key ideas are related.

Topical formulations have been used around the world for thousands of years, so a great deal of information is already available about them: the challenge is to become familiar enough with that vast body of information to identify what may be useful. For that reason, we will include monthly book reviews and website reviews, as well as brief explanations of terminology; we hope this will help our readers make better sense of the information they encounter on the web, in the bookstore, on product labels, in conversation, and elsewhere.

We are very interested in hearing from our readers; we invite everyone to participate in our online forum, where the discussions initiated here can be continued. We will also consider publishing reader-submitted articles and reviews; please contact us at natural@topical-formulations.com to share your ideas for future issues.

We hope you will enjoy reading the Journal of Topical Formulations as much as we have enjoyed producing it.

Rosemarie L. Coste, General Editor
Elishalom Yechiel, Ph.D., Scientific Editor

technology of the month: LIPOSOMES

Liposomes are little capsules made of phospholipid bilayers; the membranes of biological cells are made of the same material. Read on to learn why this is important.