EP189. The biotech ingredient wars

Every year the beauty industry embraces a new mantra. So 10 years ago that was natural. Five years ago that was the microbiome. During COVID times that really shifted towards sustainability. And long may that mantra continue. And now I think we're on the cusp of a massive shift for beauty towards biotechnology. The concern in beauty is that consumer demand for natural plant based ingredients will eventually reach a point that it outstrips supply, which is really not sustainable. And once plant species are over harvested or even go extinct, that is it. You're not necessarily going to be bringing them back anytime soon. And this is where biotechnology is supposed to be able to step in to manufacture these ingredients from natural origins and then recreate them at scale with a minimal footprint in a lab. The main interest from the beauty industry appears to be coming from the big players so far, which isn't surprising really when you consider that they are the ones who use the vast majority of the beauty industry's resources. They must honestly be rejoicing at the idea of being able to create their ingredients at vast scale with smaller impact, potentially reduced cost, and so the industry claims higher performance. We're not there fully yet. The beauty industry does still have a way to go, but there are, however, an increasing number of pioneering entrepreneurs who are making waves in the biotech sector and I'm pleased to welcome one of those entrepreneurs onto my podcast today. So if you want to have your mind slightly blown by the potential of biotech in beauty and to discuss the so called ingredient wars between natural and synthetically produced naturals, then settle in for another fascinating interview. Welcome to Green Beauty Conversations, the podcast that challenges you to think about how you buy, use, make or sell your green beauty formulations. In my weekly episodes, I explore the sustainability of the beauty industry and encourage you to join me in changing the industry for the better. I'm your host, Lorraine Dallmeier. I'm a chartered environmentalist, biologist and the CEO of award winning online organic cosmetic formulation school, Formula Botanica. We have thousands and thousands of students in over 180 countries around the world who study with us to become organic beauty formulators and entrepreneurs. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com to try our free online formulation course. And if you want to be the first person to know what's happening in green beauty, make sure you subscribe to this podcast in your favorite podcast app. So in today's episode I'm joined by Joshua Britton, the CEO and founder of Debut Biotech. Located in San Diego. D. Debut develops novel high performing bioactive ingredients using proprietary cell free technology and advanced biomanufacturing processes that give us access to a new generation of active ingredients, some of which they claim only exist in trace amounts in nature, which they then translate on an industrial scale while claiming to leave nature untouched and unscathed. Sounds fascinating, right? So at Debut, Joshua leads a rapidly growing team of 70 people and has raised over US$70 million to date for Debut. Hi Josh, how are you doing today?

I'm good, how are you doing?

I'm really good and I'm looking forward to this chat because I think it's going to be fascinating. So let's start at the top. Could you please start by introducing Debut Biotech and explain to us what you do?

Thanks. So I'm Josh Brennan, I'm the CEO of Debut Biotech and Debut Biotech is a fully vertically integrated synthetic biology company. What that means is we go all the way from the discovery of higher performing ingredients all the way through to how to use biology to make them, formulate with them, do clinical trials and put them in the hands of consumers to make better products.

Amazing. So how long have you been running Debut?

Debut's been around since 2019 of May, so we'll be coming up on our five year anniversary pretty, pretty soon.

Amazing. So now the first time I met with you, you told me this story of how you got the company started and I just want to get started with because I think it'll give the listeners a great flavor of you as well and how you got going with this.

Yeah. So I came back to UCI in 2017 and we were working on the company idea at UCI Labs with Greg Weiss who is my co founder. And in the daytime we'd have to do all the scientific experiments of how to make everything and then at nighttime I would jump in an uber from about 6pm until about 2 in the morning. I just got into the habit of pitching every single driver that I picked up from Orange county and just so happens that I picked up a lady called Linda Horiaka and we got talking and after about 7, 7 minutes, 8 minutes, she decided to write $100,000 check into the company and told me to get out the car and get back in the lab. So the next day I met with her, we finalized it, and then I never drove Uber again and quickly got in. But you know, that was the first story. The second story is my head formulation scientist, I picked up an Uber In 2018, we exchanged LinkedIn, we talked a bit about where cosmetic science was going. She followed the company for three years. And when I advertised for a head formulator, she took the interview, didn't remind me that we knew her and she moved down here and now she is like leading the section. So Uber has afforded me two great opportunities in my life and it's been amazing. But now I don't drive it until fundraising becomes really hard and then I jump back on Uber.

What a story that is. Absolutely. Well, first of all, congratulations, and I love how serendipitous that was. But obviously you had all these people getting into your cab and you pitched every single one of them. So why are you so passionate about making this a reality?

Yeah, I think it was because my original background was chemistry and trying to find these novel ingredients from cultivation as well. And the reality is that the cosmetic industry, in terms of its ingredients has had no step change since the early 1900s. So there's like two phases, I feel in cosmetic science, like all the way back from the Egyptians through cultivation, and then in like the early 1900s, someone made vitamin C. But in reality, there's been no advancements in the cosmetic ingredient space for 100 years. Right. And you went through cultivation, then you have chemistry, and now this new era has emerged onto us, which is like, actually biology can make amazing things which are higher performing. And it's become the mission of this company to, you know, we want as many bio inspired bio formulations with both efficacy and sustainability. Sustainability in people's houses. And like, that's what we live and die for at this company.

And that's also what really drove you to want to start it, obviously and pitch all those people in your Uber.

Yeah, it was like, look, do you use skincare? Yes. Do you use vitamin C? I love vitamin C. What if I told you there's something 50 times better that has much better anti aging capacity and you're the only person in the world that can have it through this brand. And people like, okay, I want to look younger. This is amazing.

Wow. By the way, what is that thing that's 50 times more powerful?

You know what? We have several coming out. We're actually releasing our own brand, soft launch in a few weeks and then hard launch in January. But we have just, we screened out of 7,000 natural compounds from plants, we've screened about 250. And some of them are really, really great at anti aging. Skin brightening, hydration, wrinkle removal. And so they're coming through our pipeline now. But the way we see it is, you know, if, if we look at a Sephora or an Ulta or some other cosmetic brand. In 10 years time, when you turn over that label, you won't recognize any of those ingredients in there because it's just like this new wave of bioactives coming through, which are just better, they just win on performance.

You're painting a fascinating picture for the future here. You said you screened hundreds of compounds. What does that mean exactly?

Yeah. So you know, if you look at a plant around your house and you look at the leaf within that leaf, there could be thousands of potential compounds. So like in the background there you've got that plant. And the reality is that the reason why vitamin C is so popular is because it's, it's so much of it in that plant that I can pull it out. Right. But in reality there are so many tiny minute amounts of these really special ingredients or chemicals and no one has ever tested them before, no one has ever managed to get them, create enough of them to put them into clinical trials, to put them into performance based tests. And that's what Debut does really well. So we find these tiny, tiny like specks of sand or salt. We work out how to make them through nature because nature does exactly that. And then we create them, we test them, we prioritize them. And so that's how we are able to come up with these ingredients that you've never heard of, I'd never heard of, but they are just really, really great.

So talk me through how you do this and you're going to have to dumb it down a little bit. Let's walk it through. Walk through in a really simple manner.

When you're looking at things like antioxidant capacity is a really, really good example and people can test how good an antioxidant is by running it in like a plate. So if I have this modular, like a chemical flask, we always, in high school, I can have a solution in there, I can drop in this ingredient and if it turns this color this quick, it's a really good antioxidant. And so what you're able to do is you can do that with something like vitamin C. Right. And maybe it takes two minutes to turn all the way to this beautiful color. And then you take these rare ingredients, you drop them in the same thing and maybe they turn the same color in half a second or a mile second. They are just so fast acting and so powerful. And so we have a range of these tests. I mean not just antioxidant, but we have things for skin elasticity, skin brightening, we have all of These claim areas that you would want to promote in a marketing claim, we had to recreate those to be able to screen these ingredients and find the top performers.

Wow. So how did you come up with the original list of, was it 7,000 you said?

Yes. A lot of the things we started with the polyphenols and I became fascinated with polyphenols because they're in everyone's diet. They are the, they're in like in a Mediterranean diet. They're very high performing. But also if you go back to the time of the Egyptians, like lots of the colors and lots of these benefits they were feeling was from diet related. And as cosmetic science moves more towards like a pharmaceutical science, that intersection, the ability to tap into these new ingredients is vital. And so polyphenols offer like so many different potentials. There's actually 7,000 novel polyphenols that exist in nature and only about 10, 20 of them have been characterized. So for us it was like, great. There's this massive pool of diversity. We can be the first to go in there and kind of screen and pull and select and get that information and find winning ingredients. And so that's the first kind of category that we head into just because there's so much potential.

So how did you know that only 10 or 20 of them had been characterized? Because a lot of the work that goes on behind the scenes in the beauty industry is like top secret, you know, like high security labs. None of that gets leaked out. How did you find out?

Yeah, so I would say that's definitely something that could have happened. Right. So like L' Oreal could have worked on it 10 years ago. But what we will say is out of the 7,000 you can only buy 250 of them commercially. And the other 6,000, 750 just have never been made before. And that's where our technology platform comes in. Because we're like, okay, we understand that for many of them it doesn't even exist in this world to test right now. So we're going to have to make it, to test it, to evaluate it. So we have that like test build cycle going on.

Amazing, right? So paint the picture for me and the listeners about what you're actually doing. Because you said you're launching a brand. Are you also working with big players? Are you also going to sell ingredients? Like how, what, what's the big picture plan?

Yeah, so debut makes money in three ways in the coming years. So we have a lot of different programs with l' Oreal and we work on the transition of their entire portfolio to 95% bio based. And that's a really important mission. So we use biology to do that. So we sell ingredients to, to l'. Oreal. What we also do as a company is that we have two different revenue lines, if you will. We release our own brands. So we find ingredients that are able to have claims which are just emerging. They are like trickles around the Internet, right? So like you hear a few people talking about it, you find it. People like, I wish there was a brand that does this and this specific thing. And so we were able to pick up on a lot of those tremors three years ago. And now they've become real trends. And we're about to inject a brand right at that that just addresses that spec specific thing. And only through the finding of new ingredients can you address that claim. What we do is we try and position for that sort of an event where maybe in three years time we're going to be talking about something that turns your hair pink. And we're like, well maybe there's a bioactive in there, a new one that does that. And so we can match like brand development and ingredient development to really penetrate that market. So that's how we make money. And then, you know, the third way that's coming online is since we had all these press releases from l', Oreal, we've had all of these brands inundate us with like, hey, we want to be 95% bio based. We want better performing ingredients to keep up with the players. Can you help us? And so that's coming online early next year. But like we feel we have the ability right now to catalyze this industrial transition away from petroleum, away from cultivation, all the way through to high performing, safe and like effective cosmetics. So that's the kind of way we position it.

Amazing. Sorry, you can't leave me hanging here. You said you're tying in with these trends that everyone's talking about on the Internet. You got a brand coming, you've got to tell me what these trends are.

So there's lots on terms of like, you know, maybe like anti redness, better hydration, physical wrinkle removal without. Can you have treatment that physically removes wrinkles and makes your skin firmer without having the treatment, can you find ingredients that are that potent, that topical? So there's lots coming like that and it gets released about two weeks. So it's been a lot of work to go all the way from discovery to like a beautiful product.

Amazing. So have you been Doing clinical trials then as well, to back up some of these claims.

Every single one of our ingredients that will be released from this company have to go through clinical trials, both the ingredient versus placebo, but also the finished skew that is released to the client or customer base. They also all go through clinicals as well. So we've definitely taken a hard stance of everything has to be clinically validated and significant and also it has to have the highest safety and quality aspects. Those are our two pillars of what makes a great beauty product.

Amazing. So just paint a picture for our listeners as well in terms of the scale of what you're working with here, because you've raised quite a bit of funding already, haven't you?

Yeah. So we've raised over $70 million to date now. And it's because, even though it sounds somewhat simple the way we're discussing it, the ability to mimic how a plant makes an ingredient on industrial scale requires 60, 70 scientists downstairs and manufacturers working on how do we make the enzymes, how do we improve them, how do we ferment this, how do we use enzyme catalysis, how do we formulate test screen scan. So it's a whole workforce down there that's involved in this process.

Wow. You must feel very proud having come from that moment in the Uber to now here with your. Your empire unfolding before you.

It's, you know, one of my lead scientists, Nick. It was just me and him at a bench about even four, four years ago. And now we have, yeah, this like, amazing team. And because we go all the way from discovery to product, it is very diverse. Right. So we have brands working with formulation, working with discovery. It's a really unique atmosphere.

Well, huge congratulations on that, definitely. So I read a press release that I saw l' Oreal put out because they. Their investment fund is also invested in Daypub. I understand. And they said in the press release that using your tech can mean that new ingredients can be delivered in as few as six weeks. Yeah, based on what? Everything you said and all these people and all the testing required. How do you do that?

Yeah. So the beautiful thing with polyphenols is that it's all controlled from a central ingredient. Right. So imagine if you can get to this target and you can make this when someone else wants a new ingredient, it's typically, let's say, one to five enzyme steps found in nature to. To all of these ingredients. And so it becomes this beautiful thing where people say, hey, we've gone through your clinical data and we found this Polyphenol right here. And it's just amazing how quick you do it. And we say, well, we have this core piece and now we just need to do a few quick modifications. And we've demonstrated it several times now that we can go from that core molecule to these brand new ones in like six weeks. And so it's about like quick validation, turning it around. Because consumer trends in the cosmetic world waits for no one.

No, that's very true actually, particularly in the beauty industry. One of your other claims on your website is that you say that some of the active ingredients you make only exist in trace amounts in nature. Yes. Do you have any examples of what that means?

Sure. So we're coming out with some pretty Rare polyphenols in 2024 that be available early 2024. And what it means is that when I look at like these trees from the Siberian rainforest, right, and we look at how and where these compounds or ingredients come from, you would have to, if you did this through cultivation, you would have to chop down entire fields of, and extract it, purify it to even get a tiny amount of the ingredient that could maybe only make like half a tub of cosmetic, whatever that is. And so those are the ones we get most excited about because you can't cultivate them. It's just, it's never going to happen. It goes against all the sustainability standards. But biotechnology allows you to say, okay, we understand how this molecule is made by this tree. So now we're going to do it in the lab, in a fermenter or some other sort of machine. And what it comes out with is this beautiful ingredient. And some of the ones we make, we make like tens if not hundreds of kilograms of and it's just not that much in the world.

That's fascinating. So I know a lot of the people listening right now are thinking, why run a small brand? Will I have access to these ingredients as well? Is that something that you plan to make available?

It is, I think so. We're a new company, we're going through this. But as we look into 2024, if you keep an eye on the website, you will likely see a contract manufacturing aspect of our company which, hey, I'm a small brand, I want to compete. I want access to 95% bio based ingredients and better ingredients. Can I work with you? And we feel that smaller brands and medium brands are as key as the big ones. They're the lifeblood of the economies not only in the States, but the world. And it's a shame that If I'm a professional, I have all the creativity and I want to make the world a better place that you wouldn't have access to it because they cost tens of millions of dollars to create. Right. So keep checking the website in early 24 and when that's up, we'll be making a press release around it and we welcome people to be like, hey, I want to make 5,000 units of this. How do I do it?

Amazing. Well, I'm sure that many of our listeners will be keeping close tabs on you now that you said these words. So stay tuned for that one.

Yeah, stay tuned. But it will be alive. It will be live. Yes.

I love it. One of the things you said to me the first time we met is you said you aim to make a significant percentage of our current cosmetic ingredients that are in use in the industry redundant in the future. And you talked earlier about, you know, you buy a product from Sephora, you turn it over, you don't recognize any of the ingredients. Why are you aiming for that?

We just have a, you know, it's our thesis at this company that consumers deserve the best. They deserve the best on performance safety, they deserve the best on quality. And the only way that can be addressed is by a providing and getting consumers access to better performing ingredients. Like if I went to McDonald's and I drove through the fry and I said, I'd like a packet of fries, please. And they came out and they're cold, soggy fries over salted. But I knew that I could have access to something that was like a beautiful french fry. It was crisp. I had this. You got one or the other, which one would you want? Right? You would want the highest performing best product. And that's what we're going to deliver. I mean there's, we're just at the point in our technology advance as a, as humanity that we can have more, we can have better, we can have more sustainability, but still, people are still stuck in the old ways of the traditional ingredients of vitamin C and vitamin A and, and so, and there'll always be people that want that, and that's great, no problem with that. But for people who want clinical excellence and performance, that's what excites us.

Can I just double check here that you're not saying that the entire beauty industry exists in cold, soggy, over salted fries?

No, maybe I went too far on that one. But it's such a night and day example. It's just, I come from a chemistry background and we're just about to give this beautiful talk on this. And vitamin C has been used since the 19, sorry, 1790s to treat scurvy. Right. And it's just like we see all these other advancements in these indust of nutrition and pharma and all of these amazing things that just improve our lives so much. And beauty hasn't had that. So it's like, all right, we're going to be the ones to step up and start providing consumers ingredients that actually do amazing things.

What would you say to people who are a little bit fearful of the fact that biotech is moving so quickly and it's a little bit of an unknown quantity to many, many people in the general public? What would you say to them?

You know, there's two different sides of biotech. And the side of biotech people are often fearful about is the ones of you of vaccines and traditional pharmaceutical companies that get injected into the body. Right. And that's. We don't do that. We do the other side, which is biotech, through its inherent nature and always undergoes the most stringent safety and quality aspects. Like when we're making something, it is at such a different level to a cosmetic ingredient. It goes through so many checks. It has to go through all these safety panels until we're convinced that this is an efficacious ingredient. Right. So I used to be a bit wary of new ingredients like how does it impact the skin. But once you're in this field and you understand the rigorous changes, especially with mokra coming through and the changes there, like, there is no hiding anymore. Your ingredients have to be safe. They have to be do what they say they do. And biotech is the only industry ready for that because it's inherent to how we were taught to make things right. It's not such a surprise for us when mokara might be a negative connotation for many people in the cosmetic field. We're like, no, this is great because we're advocates for better, higher performing, higher quality stuff.

Yeah, no, I'm with you on that one. Actually. I was delighted to see the US Put some changes in place for their very outdated regulations.

Yes, 100%.

So I have another question for you. So I had a couple of guests on the podcast previously to talk about biotech, and one guest I had on Dr. Barb Paldus of Codex Beauty. She was great. She and I discussed how it will be very challenging to create all cosmetic ingredients through biotech because ultimately we use vast resources in cosmetics and often there are a lot of ingredients that are used as the foundation you know, we're talking like palm oil, et cetera. Do you think there will always be ingredients used in cosmetics that are naturally grown and harvested, or is your vision truly to make everything synthetic from sort of natural origins?

Yeah, that's a great question. She is. She's an absolute inspiration to the field. She's really, really great. Right. There's like two phases of biotech coming. I think biotech at the moment, because it's such a new field, will be able to access and transition things like active ingredients and emollients and stabilizers and UV blockers. That aspect. But you are right. You get to next phase then of like, how do I make these formulations? 95% biotech. You come into things which are just like commodity chemicals. Now, there's two paths here. I think science is advancing quick enough that it will become available, but cost becomes an implication. So that's a whole different field. But the second more interesting thing is when we think about what those chemicals are used for in cosmetic formulations, do you think the possibility that nature has a like, like kind of chemical out there, if you will, in ingredients? I think so. And I think we're seeing that where it's like, at the moment, we might use something from a petrochemical process because it's just the standard. But what happens if there's a plant from the rainforest that secretes a chemical or an ingredient that does the same protective or preservative function? Is that a like, for, like switch? And so I think that's the two different paths here. It's either science becomes improves, which it always does, continually improves and costs come down, or there's something out there in nature which can be a replacement. And in that case, it'd be 100% biotech.

Fascinating. Final question. You talked about the concept of ingredient wars in the pitch that you originally put to Formula Botanica to be on this podcast, which I loved, which is why you're here as well. And in those ingredient wars, we've got the natural botanical ingredients that are out there in nature and they're pitted against the ones that you're synthesizing in the lab. Who do you think is going to win that war in the long run?

I'm a big fan of trend analysis. It's kind of part of my job. And I'll give you the example of how this has happened before. So we used to get aspirin on the bark of a tree, and we used to get anti cancer medications from the bark of a tree. All these people all These groups loved it. You know, you could go out naturally, get the stuff, you could cure your disease. And then suddenly people said, wait a minute, like I'm a different person. It doesn't work that well for me. I have a different skin type. It doesn't work that well for me. And there was this call for standardization, quality, better practices. And the whole pharmaceutical industry took all this extracted stuff and then went through to chemistry, which is have happened. And then they went a step further. You know, in 2022, 89% of the top drugs on the market were made from biotech. 2006, it was like 18%. So that transition, super snappy. So we look at that trend and we say, my God, the same thing is happening in beauty. Since the Egyptians, we've been doing it for cultivation. There's some chemistry now, but now biotech is about to ramp and completely take off. So I think all of these industries and then in the botanical extracts and, and it's the same thing, it's the same ingredient. But whereas you have it as 1% purity in your extract from a tree, I'm going to give it to you a 99% purity and I can tell you what it is, the clinical effects, how much to put in there, and I can make sure it's safe for every single product. And that's what we call the ingredient wars. There's going to be people that love their botanicals, they love the clean beauty movements, they love all this. But really, the opposite of clean beauty isn't dirty. It's science. And science always wins.

Oh, there's a whole nother podcast in there.

I think we've just teed one up. This is good.

You just ended us on a cliffhanger. Not entirely agreeing with you on that.

One, but I'm gonna let it go. This is gonna be okay.

This is gonna be a good episode anyway. I have no doubt that you will be at the forefront of that tidal wave throughout biotech beauty. Josh, it's been a delight having you on the podcast today. Where can people find out more about you and your work?

Sure. So debutbiotech.com or Twitter handles. But if you type debut buyer in, there'll be a ton of press releases and links and please just feel free to reach out. There's a kind of an email link there, communications at debut. If you want to know more about ingredients or working with us or just generally biotech in general, just follow us and. Or send us an email. More than happy to help out.

Amazing. We'll include all of those links with the show Notes thank you so much for joining me today.

I really enjoyed talking to you and you. We'll talk soon. Thank you.

Bye bye. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. How do you feel about biotech? Is it just too futuristic for you? Do you maybe like the idea of it? Do you think shoppers care? Tell me what you think. Leave us a comment on our social channels as both the Formula Botanica team and I love hearing from you. And if you want to hear more about some of the topics we covered today, please do delve back into the podcast archives. Go and listen to either episode 121 in which I spoke with Dr. Barb Paldus of Codex Beauty who told me that everyone who doesn't buy into biotech beauty is effective, effectively a flat earther. So go and listen to that one if you want to hear some very controversial viewpoints. Or episode 131 in which I interviewed Jake Wintermute, the developer evangelist at US based synthetic biology research company Ginkgo Bioworks, who talked with me about the future of cosmetics potentially being so innovative through biotech that we could grow our own cosmetics and pass them on effectively like a sourdough starter. That was a mind blowing conversation. There's a wealth of information in our old episodes and I do encourage you to go back and listen to them. So thank you for joining Joshua and I for this latest episode of Green Beauty Conversations. I really hope you enjoyed it. If you did, please do leave us a five star review so that other people can enjoy these conversations too. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or whatever your favorite podcast app is and stay tuned for the next episode. Follow Formula Botanica at Formula Botanica on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, TikTok, Twitter, Pinterest or LinkedIn. We are everywhere and come and give me a follow at Lorraine Dalmayer on Instagram. Visit our website@formulabotanica.com and sign up for our free online formulation course today.