Traditionally, the discovery and validation of new cosmetic ingredients has been constrained by slow innovation cycles. The process, which involves labor-intensive screening of natural compounds and extensive clinical testing, is both time-consuming and resource intensive. In an increasingly fast-paced and highly competitive market, brands require more efficient solutions to stay ahead and meet evolving consumer demands.

Biotechnology business Debut aims to tackle the challenge of ingredient discovery through its newly launched BeautyORB, an AI-powered innovation engine that provides a new way to discover novel ingredients in beauty. The technology is said to reduce the typical timeline of a single ingredient discovery from seven years to two ingredients launched each year.

“With our advanced AI platform and understanding of skin biology, we can rapidly create brand new ingredients through computational compound prediction. This allows us to activate specific aspects of skin biology while also discovering new or improved cellular pathways for enhanced clinical claims," Joshua Britton, Ph.D, founder and CEO of Debut tells BeautyMatter. "We don't have to rely on an array of existing ingredients to test against specific claims, and we don't have to go into the field to find rare ingredients in plants. All this can be done at the click of a button, cutting out years from the innovation cycle and accessing ingredients that no one has seen before.”

The genomics-based AI platform is comparable to pharmaceutical-grade technology, and has already fueled the creation of ingredients that address inflammaging, epidermal barrier repair, and longevity, as well as developing brightening, anti-aging, and scalp care ingredients that are in the pipeline.

These new ingredients include DermCeutical InglammagePRO, which decreases inflammatory markers, supports the skin barrier and enhances elasticity, which Debut claims is 15% better than niacinamide; DermCeutical Barrier RepairPRO, which focuses on epidermal repair, defending the skin from damage against environmental aggressors, believed to be 30% better than vitamin C for skin damage repair; and DermCeutical LongevityPRO, which decreases markets of cellular senescence to focus on cell longevity and help maintain optimal health, said to be 2x better than vitamin C for skin health.

BeautyORB discovers new ingredients by screening 50 billion molecules for their ability to turn on cellular pathways within skin. During the process, 20,000 genes are tested per molecule, 25,000 genes are tested per second, 21,000 molecules are screened in silico per second for deep learning, and 200+ new biological pathways are tested per molecule. “The result is a rich, proven, and growing pipeline of novel ingredients with the strongest clinical results for our customers, allowing brands to win on product performance rather than marketing,” adds Britton.

BeautyORB contains over 60 million data points that have been obtained through the business’ in-house method—according to Britton, BeautyORB is different from its competitors that use publicly available data points for their discovery platforms. “We have observed that publicly available data for both the pharmaceutical and beauty industry is incredibly noisy, meaning it is nonreproducible, and that makes it unusable. Models based on this data are not accurate,” he claims. “Debut made the hard decision to go all the way back to the beginning and generate our own high accuracy data sets, assays, and validation steps. We are confident we have the highest accuracy data set in the beauty industry. As they say, high quality data in, high quality data out.”

Britton believes that BeautyORB is a key step in the convergence of pharma and beauty, with the technology also being used to find ingredients that fight disease, allowing for the development of cosmetic ingredients that give targeted responses. As within medical fields, consumer safety of these ingredients is a high priority in the development process. “All our ingredients pass through incredibly rigorous safety, toxicology, and regulatory steps to ensure we are bringing the best ingredients to market that are safe for consumers,” continues Britton. “We are most proud that our safety screen and testing are in line with that of the largest beauty companies on the planet. Additionally, all our ingredients comply with the global regulations where our products are sold.” 

For Britton, BeautyORB outshines its competitor counterparts due to Debut’s ability to integrate these ingredients into the rest of its beauty portfolio. “It is one thing to generate an ingredient “hit,” but quite another to ensure that the ingredient goes through the right preclinical, clinical, and formulation screens to ensure that it can be used. There are no beauty companies that are vertically integrated with their model in this way,” he says.

Debut partners with contract manufacturer KDC/ONE to create finished products in tandem with its custom formulation business BiotechXBeautyLabs, to achieve product performance with the safest sustainability credentials.

As the beauty industry embraces biotechnology solutions—with names including L’Oréal and ELC also investing in the space—it becomes clear how advanced technology cannot only keep beauty businesses on track with the pace of market demands, but also set new benchmarks for efficiency, efficacy, and innovation.