The CHRYSALIS Peel™ is Ready to Meet California's TCA-Free Moment

On January 1, 2027, California Assembly Bill 496 (AB 496) ––which prohibits manufacturing, selling, delivering, holding, or offering for sale any cosmetic product with intentionally added TCA––goes into effect.

This flips the traditional chemical peel script for medical aesthetic practices on its head. TCA is an effective ingredient that is widely used in peels, sometimes as a primary focus but also often as an adjunct. 

That’s part of what makes this a tricky situation: The ban is ingredient-based and not concentration-based. Whether a peel contains 5% TCA or 35% TCA, the ban applies all the same.  There also is no exemption based on products identified as “for professional use” or “medical grade,” or treatments administered under the medical direction of a physician.

This takes some of the most recognizable peels (and topical stimulators) out of the game in California. Peels that are offered at most aesthetic practices and asked for by name by patients, like The Perfect Derma Peel, VI Peel, PRX Derm Perfexion, and BioRePeel.

This leaves a gap in the market that the TCA-Free CHRYSALIS Peel™ is ready to fill. Even though AB 496 was first signed into law on October 8, 2023, and manufacturers have had time to reformulate or introduce new TCA-Free products, a clear market winner has not emerged from the familiar names. Perhaps that is because removing TCA from a peel originally built around TCA presents an inherent challenge: you are trying to recreate an established result without the ingredient that helped define it. 

CHRYSALIS started from a different place. The Italian developers at Derm Qode Lab approached chemical resurfacing from a blank slate, asking what a modern medium-depth peel could look like if it were designed around today's expectations for efficacy, tolerability, versatility, and downtime from the very beginning.

That distinction matters.

CHRYSALIS Peel™ System’s baseline treatment features a 37% multi-acid, low-pH formulation that works through a nearly invisible peeling process called Micronized Exfoliation™ and is the only peel that simultaneously provides integrated anti-inflammatory, anti-microbial and recovery support.

The result is a system designed for the expectations of the modern aesthetics market: a pleasant and pain-free treatment experience, meaningful skin resurfacing and remodeling, customizable protocols for multiple concerns, combination protocols with other technologies, treatment across all six Fitzpatrick skin types, year-round versatility, and minimal disruption to patients’ daily lives.  It also delivers best-in class financial performance for the clinic, even at very reasonable retail pricing.

As California prepares to move beyond TCA, aesthetic practices have an opportunity to do more than simply find a replacement. They can rethink what a modern chemical peel should deliver. CHRYSALIS is TCA-Free, but it is also more than that; it brings the results and the minimal downtime that today’s patients expect. January 1, 2027 may mark the end of TCA in California cosmetics, but it also creates an opening for something better. Connect with a Derma Primis representative to learn more about CHRYSALIS Peel™ and how to bring the system into your practice.