From infrared saunas to PEMF mats, we’re all trying to biohack our way into living not just longer but better. According to Allied Market Research group, the longevity and anti-senescence therapies market will reach $44.2 billion by 2030. As the convergence of regenerative wellness, longevity, and beauty trend leads us into 2025, the appetite for consumer products created with pharmaceutical rigor is continuing to grow.
Swiss biotech company Timeline has been ahead of this curve for almost two decades. The company was founded in 2007 as a spinoff of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, under the umbrella of biotech corporation Amazentis by life sciences entrepreneur and biomedical engineer Chris Rinsch and neuroscientist Patrick Aebischer.
Its premise is to apply biotech-level science to natural products, creating a next generation of functional foods as well as optimizing health by acting on the pathways that prevent aging with the intake of the right actives. The company’s scientific advisory board includes Dr. Johan Auwerx, who directs the Laboratory for Integrated and Systems Physiology at École Polytechnique Fédérale (EPFL) de Lausanne; Dr. Carmen Sandi, Director of the Brain and Mind Institute; and Dr. Eric M. Verden, President and CEO of Buck Institute for Research on Aging.
In partnership with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology de Lausanne, the Timeline team spent 15 years researching the molecules of the pomegranate, fractioning out the fruit’s compounds and testing them both individually and together throughout over 500 studies. This led to identifying the ellagitannin compounds found in the highest concentration in its husk and membranes. Ellagitannins, also responsible for the fruit’s astringent taste, are transformed into a postbiotic called Urolithin A by the gut microflora.
Through testing, the team was able to determine Urolithin A’s impact on cellular health, specifically by improving mitochondria function through boosting ATP (adenosine triphosphate)—in layman’s terms by boosting the battery of the cell. Ninety percent of cellular energy is produced by mitochondria, and their functioning impacts vital health functions like sight, muscle function, brain health, and skin health. They also found that the ingredient stimulated a recycling of the damaged mitochondria, also known as mitophagy. As the body ages, there is an increase of the basal level of inflammation, or inflammaging, as the industry recently started coining this phenomenon, which negatively impacts mitochondria function.
But only 30% to 40% of individuals would be able to convert the ingested pomegranate into Urolithin A, depending on individual bacterial composition. Furthermore, one would need to drink five glasses of pomegranate juice a day to get 500 mg of Urolithin A, the beneficiary dose determined by the Timeline team.
This Urolithin A gave birth to Timeline’s patented (56 patents and counting) ingredient Mitopure. Nestlé Health Science became an investor in 2019, with the Mitopure Softgels supplement launching in July 2020. In two months of daily supplementation, cellular energy and muscle endurance improved by 17% according to a randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial with 66 healthy adults aged 65 and older. Muscle strength improved by 12% after four months, according to a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study of 90 healthy and overweight adults aged 40 to 65 years.
Indeed, Timeline is not afraid to put its product to test, completing 11 human clinical trials with over 900 participants to date. The company’s studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals like MedRxviv, Cell Reports Medicine, Nature Metabolism, and the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition. “We're a small company, but we're trying to raise the bar for all the other companies. It's our goal to become that longevity company that people can trust to come to for all their needs, whether it's oral nutrition products or topical products,” Rinsch tells BeautyMatter.
“It was around the time that we were doing all these clinical studies when I started thinking about what could other benefits be? How can we improve things even more in the body?” he recalls. Skincare and topical applications were the next frontier. When Mitopure was applied topically at 1% concentration daily during an eight-week randomized and controlled study with treated split-face/arm study design, wrinkles and fine lines were reduced by 3.2% after eight weeks. Another eight-week, randomized, controlled, placebo clinical study with a split-face/arm study design across 48 women aged 50 to 75 found that application upregulated genes linked to collagen assembly. Another randomized clinical trial of a UVB erythema study on 22 adults aged 18 and over found that with a short term treatment of 24 hours using Mitopure, there was a 14.3% reduction in sunburn damage.
In January 2023, the company launched Timeline Skin Health, comprised of The Day Cream, The Night Cream, and The Serum, bringing Mitopure’s anti-inflammatory benefits to the skin. In January 2024, the company raised an oversubscribed Series D financing round of $66 million, led by Nestlé and L’Oréal, to help expand its science, product categories, and markets across health, beauty, and food sectors. “Longevity adds a new dimension to beauty, focused on predicting, correcting, and even reversing the aging of our skin, scalp, and hair. Our investment in Timeline is exciting for its potential to transpose key hallmarks of longevity onto skin health and beauty,” commented Barbara Lavernos, Deputy Chief Executive Officer in charge of Research, Innovation and Technology, L’Oréal Groupe.
“Life science takes time to innovate. There's a lot of starts and stops, “ Rinsch says. “We've been very fortunate to have an amazing group of investors who have been with us since the very beginning.” The potential of Timeline’s innovation goes beyond the mere cosmetic or practical everyday application. In a May 2024 research article published in Cancer Research Communications, it was found that Urolithin A increased naive CD8+ T cells, a key tool in helping the body defend itself against cancer.
“It's more than just a brand. What we've developed is a new nutrient. You want everybody to know about it and the health benefits and to be able to benefit from those. [In the case of omega 3], what we see is that over the last 25 years, a nutrient that wasn't in people's vocabulary in the year 2000 is now a common word. What we're trying to do, in addition to talking about Timeline, we want to get everybody to understand what Urolthin A Mitopure does from a biological perspective. In the end, I see Urolthin A as having that market potential of omega three,” he says. “I'm really excited about the future and how we develop our brand.”
The time, investment, and resources that have gone into this innovation are also reflected in its pricing: $250 for its 50 ml creams, $280 for a 30 ml serum, and $125 for a 30-day supply of its supplements. Packaging is 100% recyclable, with refill systems available for its cream products and supplements. Rinsch says Timelines' offerings are resonating across a fluid range of ages and genders with early adopters, biohackers, and health strivers,
The brand is currently distributed through its DTC channels and Amazon, with plans for further retail expansion, although Rinsch is hoping to gain as many customers as possible through the company’s own channels to uphold a strong level of direct interaction and feedback. “We can field questions, we can communicate with our Timeliners, people who are taking our product, and into longevity. That's really important for us,” he states. “What's exciting is to hear from our customers and all the benefits they have. On a weekly basis, our customer service team gives us some updates on different feedback. We get calls from time to time from people who are telling us that they taking the product, and they're experiencing more energy and improved muscle function. It’s something that gets us up in the morning.”
For the future, Rinsch is hoping to expand Mitopure A into different product formats and deliver its benefits in new ways, such as brain health and skin health. Jamiee Holmes, the former VP of Beauty and Wellness at Goop, was recently brought on as Chief Branding Officer.
“At some point in the future, we will of course, go retail, and I think that's perhaps more important for a topical product than it is for an oral nutrition product because more and more oral nutrition products are just being sold online,” he adds. With 100% growth year over year, Timeline’s audience is already showing impressive growth. With ongoing studies on the horizon and more potential applications ahead, Timeline’s future trajectory is undoubtedly on the up.
