Marta Ferreira
CEO
Inovapotek
Biography
Marta Ferreira is CEO and Technical Director of Inovapotek, a CRO proving R&D, testing and consulting services to the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry, and President of the Portuguese Society of Cosmetic Science. Holds a master's degree in Pharmaceutical Sciences and a master's degree in Pharmaceutical Technology and has now more than 15 years of experience in cosmetics product development, testing and regulatory affairs.
Conference
Day 2
Session 4: Skin & Brain Axis
A Comprehensive Framework for Stress and Sleep Assessment in Clinical Research
Understanding the interplay between psychological stress and sleep quality is essential for chaterizing well-being-related pathways within the broader skin-brain axis. Developing robust clinical study designs to evaluate these interactions is essential for supporting innovation in well-being-oriented products. This work presents a comprehensive methodological framework for assessing stress and sleep that combines objective biomarkers, validated psychometric tools, and quality-of-life indicators.
A controlled clinical study was conducted on adults with self-reported sleep quality. Over 28 days, participants followed a standardized nightly protocol while undergoing salivary cortisol profilling at four daily time points, enabling characterization of endocrine rhythms associated with stress. In parallel, the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) and quality-of-life questionaires captured subjective perceptions related to restfulness, daily functioning, and overall well-being.
Cortisol remained consistent throughout the study, demonstrating the robustness and reliability of home-based biomarker collection.
Subject-reported outcomes revealed significant improvements across multiple sleep components such as sleep quality, sleep duration, daytime functioning, and ultimately their perceived well-being. Together, these findings highlight the value of integrated biological and clinical readouts in clinical testing, reinforcing inovapotek ability to design rigorous and comprehensive studies.