Last October, biotech company Arcaea completed a $78 million Series A funding round with investors including Chanel, Givaudan, Olaplex and others. The company, which has received so much attention since its inception, plans to use DNA sequencing, bioengineering and fermentation to develop new beauty ingredients and products, with the goal of creating a new beauty supply chain that does not rely on petrochemicals or consume natural resources such as plants and animals.
Given the current state of the beauty supply chain, Arcaea CEO Jasmina Aganovic still feels there are "some challenges" to this vision, saying: "The entire business history of this industry has relied on chemistry to make ingredients, on taking a certain ingredient and extracting something from it. So whether it's petrochemicals, animals, or plants, when you extract them, you have to apply different temperatures, pressures, and heat to get the molecules you really want. ”
So far, this has provided about 16,000 usable ingredients for beauty products, but Aganovic said: "In order to maintain the supply chain of a multinational company, there is not enough soil to grow plants to maintain a supply of raw materials for all of its product lines, and we can solve this problem." ”
Biotechnology is getting more attention in the beauty industry
Arcaea will move from those traditional models to more sustainable methods, such as using yeast to replicate different DNA codes and grow ingredients in a similar way to brewing beer.
In China, biotechnology may also become a new hot spot for capital investment in beauty, and synthetic biotechnology skincare brand Suohua just announced in February the completion of tens of millions of yuan of angel round financing, the main ingredient of the brand is recombinant collagen. The synthetic biology company Weiming Shiguang, which provides skin care products and medical beauty raw materials, also completed an angel round and a Pre-A round of financing with a total amount of nearly 50 million yuan last year.
In fact, across the capital market, synthetic biology has been hot since last year, and SynBioBeta data shows that synthetic biology startups raised a total of $18 billion in 2021, far more than the previous year. Zymergen, a biotech company that has received multiple investments from SoftBank, was IPO last year, and Ginkgo Bioworks was also listed as an SPAC, valuing it at $17.5 billion, and Arcaea was launched on the Ginkgo Bioworks platform.
Traceability
The reason why synthetic biology has been popular with capital is that in addition to the production process is safer than chemical engineering, the raw materials produced are likely to be more efficient and cheaper, and the impact on the environment is also small, such as lower energy consumption in production, not occupying a lot of land to grow plants, not killing animals, and reducing the carbon footprint generated by raw material transportation.
Because many perfume raw materials such as sandalwood, musk deer, etc. are endangered, the perfume industry has to embark on the road of seeking synthetic alternatives early, the famous perfumer Rodrigo Flores-Roux once said: "Synthetic materials make the modern perfume industry possible, usually a perfume contains an average of 40-60 kinds of raw materials." And among them, artificial flavors account for 70%, and natural flavors account for only 30%. ”
However, chemical synthetic fragrances can cause serious pollution to the environment, and biotechnology has become a new solution for perfumes to become sustainable. Last year synthetic biology company Conagen successfully produced "pure" sustainable musk compounds, using microbial fermentation technology to develop musk macrolides from plant substrates, which react with enzymes to produce biological musk components with a similar odor to musk.
In the skincare field, synthetic squalane introduced by synthetic biology giant Amyris has become an important source of revenue for it, and 70% of the world's squalane is produced from Amyris, an ingredient traditionally extracted from shark liver oil, which has led to a large number of sharks being killed. Amyris CEO John Melo has said: "By fermenting and producing squalane, we can save 3 million sharks a year. Our sustainability philosophy started with the idea that once you kill a shark, the shark can't produce any squalene on it. Our raw material is extracted from sugarcane, which is a five-year crop. ”
Amyris' skincare brand Biossance
Geltor, a biotechnology company whose main product is collagen synthesis, has also achieved more sustainable production, and Alex Lorestani, CEO and co-founder of the company, told BeautyInc: "Third-party life cycle analysis proves that our water consumption has been reduced by 79%, greenhouse gases have been reduced by 50%, and the land needed to produce protein through fermentation has been reduced by 40%. ”
In addition, synthetic biology is also bringing more possibilities for environmentally friendly packaging. Last year, L'Oréal announced the launch of the first cosmetics packaging bottle made entirely of recyclable plastic, which is achieved through the enzyme technology of the biotechnology company Carbios, most plastics can only be recycled 2 to 3 times before they cannot be used, but Carbios' recycling technology does not reduce the quality of plastic, thus achieving continuous recycling. At present, L'Oréal's brand Biotherm has adopted this packaging.
Recyclable packaging made with Carbios enzyme technology
Today's consumers have increasingly wanted to know what the products they buy mean for the natural environment, whether there are animals behind them that are harmed, and at this point, beauty products created through biotechnology can undoubtedly get more trust from consumers. But at the same time, "natural ingredients are better" is still a popular view, whether it is natural ingredients are more favored by consumers, or the demonization of some artificial ingredients in the "pure" beauty movement, it can be seen that it will take more time for consumers to accept biosynthetic ingredients.
Barbara Paldusaldus, CEO and founder of Codex Beauty, said that the exchange around biotechnology also requires a lot of consumer education, she said: "Biotechnology is actually natural, and proteins and stem cells are 100% the same as those extracted from plants. Biotechnology is actually Natural 2.0 because you can get sustainable ingredients from it that are not contaminated, and since these ingredients are not diluted, they usually have better efficacy as well. ”BINC
Thanks to Allison Collins for contributing to this article
Author: Lee
EDIT: Horse Spurs
Image source: Network