The study, in one line
A 2023 University of Surrey collaboration ran a placebo-controlled trial on NOVOS Core's finished formulation and reported improvements on a panel of skin-aging biomarkers over the trial period. It is peer-reviewed. It is on the exact SKU sold today, not a modified version. That earns it our Tier 1 evidence badge, because our tier system rewards trials on the actual finished product rather than only on the individual ingredients.
The COI, also in one line
NOVOS funded the study. There is, at the time of writing, no independent replication of the result by a research group with no financial relationship to the company. Both facts are true; both belong on the product page.
Sponsor-funded ≠ invalid. But unreplicated + sponsor-funded means the finding is a strong signal, not a settled conclusion.
How we handle sponsor-funded evidence
We do not throw sponsor-funded trials out. In supplements, they are often the only human data that exists on a finished product, and treating them as automatically worthless would just mean punishing the brands that bothered to run a trial at all. Instead we do three things:
- We show the COI in the evidence block, in the same font size as the rest of the evidence. It isn't a footnote.
- We adopt the trial's effect estimates but cap the confidence weight we give them, because independent replication is what earns full weight in Tier 1.
- We link the paper so the reader can judge the effect sizes for themselves.
What this means for the score
NOVOS Core is the only Tier 1 product in the current comparison. That's why it sits where it does on the leaderboard. If an independent group replicates the skin-aging findings, we'll upgrade the confidence weight; if a well-powered independent trial fails to replicate, we'll downgrade it. The methodology page shows exactly which lever moves.
What the second NOVOS trial (STAMINA) adds
The University of Surrey group also ran the STAMINA trial on a near-identical formulation, which we treat as Tier 2 evidence in the same dossier, supporting but not overlapping with the finished-product Tier 1 result. That's why NOVOS Core's evidence stack looks unusually deep for a supplement in this category.