Biotech: Engineering the future of fragrance, cosmetics, and personal care
With the scale of commercial production increasing and research advancing in both academic and corporate labs, biotechnology is on course to revolutionize the beauty industry.
Product development
With biotechnology, never-before-possible products are coming to market. Products like Nannette de Gaspé’s Restorative Techstile Masques, which are made with biomimetic microvector technology developed by BioMode Concepts.
“Ingenuity is as crucial as science,” Karine Théberge, the company’s CEO and founder, told Cosmetics Design. “At Biomod we don’t look at optimizing what exists, we think out of the box to build what is needed.”
And other novel products are in the pipeline. Daniel Alain Life Science recently acquired technology that can help the body resist hair loss from styling. The company has plans to put this biotech to use in hair care and styling formulations.
Sourcing ingredients
Natural ingredients are being replicated with biotech, and newly imagined ingredients are coming to market too. Some proponents see biotech as the next wave of sustainability: “When it comes to personal care, bioidentical ingredients or Meristems are a perfect example of how we can minimize our impact on the environment, offer high purity ingredients and formulations with no pesticides, fertilizers, less water, and no land,” indie beauty leader Jillian Wright has told Cosmetics Design.
And countless companies are building and buying the capabilities to supply cosmetic and personal care manufactures with biotech ingredients. Early this year, for instance, Takasago acquired Center Ingredient Technology.
“With the highly advanced manufacturing technologies and capabilities of CIT and Takasago's unique and patented fermentation technologies, we expect significant quality, cost and efficiency improvements,” Satoshi Masumura, president and CEO of Takasago, said at the time.
