The breakthrough science making Dove the expert in hair repair

The Bio-Protein Care Technology found in Dove’s new Damage Therapy range works both deep within and on the microscopic fibres that make up a strand of hair.

While heat styling, bleaching and colouring hair can cause damage, this unique technology replenishes hair with levels of repairing actives that far exceed those lost from the hair fibre. It means Dove Damage Therapy can provide unprecedented hair repair at an accessible price point.

We know that when hair is damaged it leaches proteins – critical components of the hair’s cortex (the central layer of each strand) and cuticle (the outer layer). This matters because proteins form a type of internal scaffolding structure that confers healthy strength, movement and feel to hair fibres.

When proteins are gradually lost to damage, the natural fibre properties become progressively compromised, resulting in hair that is brittle, rough, and prone to knots.

Dove’s Bio-Protein Care Technology replaces the materials lost from hair fibres with biomimetic actives, replenishing the fibre properties from the inside out.

Hair is made from around 90% protein. That’s the source of its strength. When it’s damaged it loses these all-important proteins, which are made from amino acids. Through Unilever’s leading-edge proteomics capability (large-scale studies of proteins and how they behave), we have established that one of the amino acids most readily lost to damage is glutamic acid.

To strengthen damaged hair, we ideally want to put back what it has lost, but this is seldom simple. For example, glutamic acid is very difficult to integrate into product formulas, resulting in low efficacy. Until now.

Our scientists at Port Sunlight discovered a way to overcome this formulation challenge and incorporate an ingredient that maximises the release of glutamic acid molecules, over and above using the acid itself.

Our Bio-Protein Care Technology, developed by Unilever and completely exclusive to Dove, injects the core of the hair with 1 trillion glutamic acid molecules – identical to the ones naturally found in hair. That’s the key, patented breakthrough that makes Dove Intensive Repair shampoo and conditioner so effective.

Hair is an incredibly versatile and complex biological structure which, once formed – or keratinised – is dead. At Unilever’s R&D hubs, we’ve spent years piecing together information on how the fibre is structured, what it’s composed of, and how to get substantive materials into and onto the fibre.

Thanks to advances like AI, we can now better understand both hair and our materials – it shapes our understanding from the nano (protein) to macro (head of hair) scales. We used this information to identify and design molecules that act as bio-nano-engineers to revive damaged hair by restructuring and restoring the proteins within it, leaving it up to 10 times stronger than before use^[a].

Our teams at Unilever’s Port Sunlight R&D hub collaborated with the Materials Innovation Factory (MIF), an R&D centre in Liverpool, UK, co-founded by Unilever and the University of Liverpool.

Scientists at Port Sunlight invented the technology, and teams at the MIF, which has the world’s highest concentration of robots doing material chemistry, were able to prove what we hypothesised would happen.

They used leading-edge measurement capability to visualise structures at the nano scale and identify where single atoms of specific elements are located, to help understand the penetration and distribution of the Damage Therapy active within the hair fibre. This wasn’t doable 10 years ago.

It meant we could prove that the active found in Dove’s Intensive Repair products penetrates all the way to the centre of the hair fibre cortex – something that has previously been impossible for us to achieve.

Dove Damage Therapy provides consumers with a proven formula made with biomimetic ingredients, that strengthens hair tenfold from the outside, and uses an amino acid naturally found in hair to strengthen it from within.

It’s the biggest scientific breakthrough that we’ve ever seen for Dove Hair, and a great demonstration of the superior science we’re able to deliver.