Agency / Future Formula

What it is

Future Formula is a personalised compounded night cream sold by Agency, a Curology brand, at $40 a month with a 60-day supply shipped every 60 days. A dermatology provider selects the actives from a set of five: tretinoin, azelaic acid, tranexamic acid, niacinamide and dexpanthenol.

What it does that nothing else here does

We have now assessed fifteen products across three companies and spent most of that time asking for information nobody publishes. This is the first page that supplies most of it without being asked.

• ▸A full inactive ingredient list. Aloe, isoparaffin, caprylic/capric triglyceride, water, laureth-7, phenoxyethanol, polyacrylamide, tocopheryl acetate, triethylene glycol. Only one other product in this register publishes one, and it comes from the same parent company.
• ▸A note that tretinoin formulas contain BHT — an antioxidant, included specifically to protect the retinoid. That is good formulation practice and disclosing it is better.
• ▸A note that formulas containing dexpanthenol, or both niacinamide and azelaic acid, contain propylene glycol. Propylene glycol is a recognised irritant for a minority of users, and this is the only page here that lets those people check before buying.
• ▸A stated adjustment period — dryness, redness, peeling, flaking — rather than a promise of results by day 30.
• ▸A pregnancy warning on a retinoid page. Fifteen reviews in, this is the first.
• ▸A titration instruction: start every other night, build to nightly as skin adjusts.

The formula anticipates its own side effects

Look at the five actives as a system rather than a list. Tretinoin is the engine — the best-evidenced topical for photoageing, and the one that causes the trouble. Azelaic acid and tranexamic acid attack pigment by two genuinely different routes: azelaic inhibits tyrosinase with selectivity for hyperactive melanocytes, tranexamic acid works upstream on the plasminogen pathway that drives UV-triggered melanogenesis.

Then two agents whose job is to make the first three survivable. Niacinamide damps inflammation and supports barrier lipid synthesis. Dexpanthenol is a humectant and anti-inflammatory that feeds barrier repair.

Two barrier-support ingredients around a retinoid is not padding. Retinoid outcomes are governed by adherence, adherence is governed by tolerability, and tolerability is what a formula like this is buying. Few competitors bother.

On the missing concentrations

No concentration appears on the product page. Ordinarily this is where we would spend the review, and we have done exactly that for several products. Here the situation is genuinely different.

The formula is personalised. A provider selects the actives and the strengths for each patient, so there is no single number a product page could truthfully print. The concentration is on the label of the tube you receive — which is why third-party ingredient databases carry them.

The 85% claim, and why it is better than most

The headline is that 85% of customers report Future Formula works better than over-the-counter retinol products they have tried, in a survey of 231 patients using it for nine to twelve months.

This is still a grade C record. It is self-reported, uncontrolled, unblinded, assessed by paying customers, and it measures a preference rather than an effect. The comparator — whatever retinol they happen to have used — is unspecified and varies by respondent.

But compare how it is presented against the claims we have assessed elsewhere. It states its sample size. It states its duration. It calls itself a survey. And the duration it uses — nine to twelve months — is a period over which a retinoid genuinely does something, rather than the thirty days at which a competitor measured 91% for a retinoid its own page said takes six to eight weeks.

A grade C record described accurately is worth more than a grade C record dressed as a clinical result. This is the first company in this register to do the former.

Where it sits against the alternatives

Three products in this register now occupy the same space — a compounded prescription retinoid with supporting actives, on subscription.

Musely scores higher because a published three-tier ladder tells you exactly what you are getting and how to step up. Agency scores well behind on that one axis and comfortably ahead on every other disclosure measure. Between them they describe what a good version of this product would look like: Musely's published tiers with Agency's ingredient transparency.

If you are considering it

• ▸Ask your provider which actives and what strengths you have been prescribed once the first formula issues. The label carries them.
• ▸If the tretinoin comes in at 0.015%, ask what the path to a higher strength looks like and on what timeline.
• ▸Check the inactive list against anything you have reacted to before — propylene glycol in particular, which the page tells you about.
• ▸Follow the titration instruction. Every other night first, build to nightly.
• ▸Wear broad-spectrum SPF daily. A retinoid without it is working against you.
• ▸Judge it at twelve weeks minimum. The company's own survey uses nine to twelve months, which is a more honest horizon than most.
• ▸Do not use it if there is any chance you are pregnant.

Where we stand

This is a well-built product from a company that treats its buyers as capable of reading an ingredient list. The formula is coherent, the supporting actives are chosen to keep people on the retinoid rather than to pad the label, the price is fair against a stated supply duration, and the disclosure is the best we have assessed.

It is a 60 rather than higher for one reason: a personalised product that will not publish its range leaves the buyer unable to know whether they are getting a therapeutic dose or one below the trial threshold. That is a real gap, and it is the only substantial one.

Publish the range and this becomes the product we recommend to most people asking about prescription anti-ageing.