Future of Beauty: A Chemist Predicts The Next Niacinamide, What The Beauty Biz Change-Makers Are Banking On Now and The Reason “Inflammaging” Will Be The Word on Everyone’s Lips This Year

0:00The following podcast is a dear media production.

0:07Welcome to Breaking Beauty, the podcast all about the breakthrough people, products, and moments in beauty. We're your hosts, Jill Dunn and Carlene Higgins.

0:20Hi, Carlene, and hi to all of our Breaking Beauty pod fam tuning in. Welcome to another episode of Breaking Beauty podcast. And hello, Jill, happy to be back on the mic with you this week, like we have for the past eight years. I can't believe we're in our eighth year now. So congrats to you for sticking with me. And to you. Heck yeah. Every single week, baby, I'm here. Yep. Delivering the breakthrough people, products, and moments in beauty. We're definitely doing that today. I'm personally really excited about this topic. It's very busy right now. We're going to be talking all about inflammation.

0:55This conversation is brought to you in partnership with our friends at Dende Skincare. And I also have to say, I think coming into the new year, it's the perfect time to do kind of a future of beauty, to look ahead to where the whole industry is going. And so another one of the subjects we're going to be talking about is biotech, which everyone and anyone who we talk to is always saying how the future of beauty is about biotech. And I think what our listeners are going to love about today's episode is that our guest today, he explains what biotech is so well in layperson's terms. You guys are all going to know exactly what we're talking about by the end of this episode.

1:37Yeah. He explains it so well to your point that it made me excited about what's to come. And if you haven't heard of Dende, it's a pioneering preventative longevity skincare brand that targets inflammation, like you said, Carleen, and it's designed for the zillennial, I would say. So 25 to 35 years old. So for those people who are just starting to see the first signs of aging, maybe uneven skin tone, their first line, texture concerns, and they're looking to adopt a preventative approach to their skincare routine. Now, I will say I'm a smidge older than a zillennial, but I've actually emptied the moisturizer.

2:12So I really liked it. Okay. One of your favorites already. Our featured guest is Joshua Britton. He's the CEO of Dende Skincare. He trained as a scientist at MIT, where he gained a postdoctoral degree in chemistry. He also holds a PhD in organic chemistry. And I think the thing that's already put Dende on the map is that the parent company called Debut Biotech, which Joshua is the CEO of, it's a first of its kind vertically integrated brand incubator bringing biotech driven climate positive solutions to market. And they've been making headlines this year because L 'Oreal's venture capital fund, that's called Bold.

2:51It signed on as Debut's lead investor with more than$70 million in funding. And you know, when L 'Oreal is interested in investing, this is a company to pay attention to. So what's the big scientific breakthrough? That's what we're going to learn about today. And in their own words, Dende is the first and only skincare line to harness Naren Jenin through biotechnology in their four products. These are the first four that they've launched with the Purifying Whipped Cleanser, the Skin Strengthening Serum, Moisture Locking Face Stick, that's an interesting one, and a Barrier Building Moisture Cream.

3:28Jill, you mentioned that's your favorite of the bunch. Yeah, that's my fave. Apparently, the Skin Strengthening Serum is the best seller so far. It's around$88 in the US and$98 in Canada, just for everyone's reference. We're really excited for this conversation with Joshua today. And if you decide that you want to try Dende, we have an exclusive promo code for Breaking Beauty listeners. So if you're based in the US, you can visit Dende.com. That's spelled D-E-I-N-D-E.com and use code BEAUTY for 15 % off your next purchase. Once again, Dende.com and use code BEAUTY for 15 % off. And we'll link to this in our show notes, of course, as always.

4:08Yes. And for listeners based in Canada, you can visit renee.com to purchase Dende products. That's R-E-N-N-A-I.com. And now onto our conversation with Joshua.

4:29Hi, friends. I'm Cameron Rogers, mental health advocate, mom of two, content creator, and host of Conversations with Camp. This podcast is dedicated to having honest conversations, prioritizing your wellbeing and reminding you that no matter what you're feeling, you are not alone. We'll discuss mental health maintenance, the ups and downs of motherhood, the trials and tribulations of life, and have a lot of fun along the way. Whether you're knee deep in diapers or just trying to keep your sanity intact, this podcast is for you. Expect laughs, maybe a few tears, and hopefully some breakthroughs along the way.

4:57Make sure to subscribe and tune in for new episodes of Conversations with Cam every Wednesday morning.

5:10Welcome to Breaking Beauty Podcast, Joshua. We were having a little chat before we jumped on the mic and I noticed that your accent flipped and you mentioned you were calling in from Orange County and then I was like, wait a minute, what is happening here? So tell us what's the story behind your accent and just do a little talking. People will hear it. Okay. Well, yeah, hopefully we'll get this out, but thank you for the invite to speak here. But yeah, the accent's a weird amalgam and mixture of things. I was born in Wales in the UK. I spent about 18 years of my life there. So there's like a little Welsh twang.

5:42And then I did university up to my master's in Nottingham, Northern England. So I got a little bit of an English twang. My PhD was between Australia and California. And so I have like a little bit of an Aussie American twang there. So sometimes I'll sound more Australian, sometimes I'll sound more British. And it's just this weird, weird accent going on. So if there's anything I say that you don't understand, we'll just repeat it. Yes. At first I was hearing the Orange County and then I fully was hearing the Australian. So that's really funny. And I bet when you get around a group of people from either which place, then you just go full on.

6:19It's horrendous. Yeah, it's horrendous. But we get that. Thank you so much for making the time to join us. So we're very curious, How did you get your start working in the beauty business? Oh, yeah. So I think for everyone, I think you can look at me and go, this guy is not from the beauty industry, right? And that's okay. Like, I'm okay with that. So we'd be learning. But so my whole background, I had a PhD in chemistry and biochemistry. And so my whole fascination was on the science behind ingredients and molecules and creating new ones. And so 10 years of my formal training was on creating new molecules and testing them.

6:54And so I started a company with my co-founder out of University of California, Irvine, called Greg Weiss. And we were able to create all these amazing ingredients. And when we looked around a business model of where it had to go, beauty was the industry that was calling for it. There's no other industry like beauty. It's so innovative. It's so advanced. It's so fast moving. People are always looking for higher, better performing products. They're always looking for new experiences. And so when you're taking a new technology like what we create to market, that was kind of the pull and the allure that we could bring something new.

7:31We could bring it to consumers. And, you know, for those not in the science world, that's one of the most frustrating things when you work on programs for four to six years. Right. And it never leaves the lab. And one of the best things we're able to see now is I think, you know, every 12 minutes we're selling a product. right? And being able to see the science go from a lab out to the real world, that is another reason why we love beauty. So the combination of a pull from what people need and consumers need and trying to provide better differentiated products and experiences combined with like a lot of science, like 80 scientists behind Dende at the moment in the lab.

8:10It was the combination of those two things really meeting in the middle. And that's why this works so well. Mm hmm. Now, I want to ask you, because we know that there are a lot of skincare brands still launching to this day. It's really competitive space. That's something you probably figured out quickly. And there's there seems to be almost like a divide between these really natural brands and these really science led brands. And sometimes they are led by a doctor or PhD or the science. So how were you able to kind of break through with this science led skincare technology when, again, there are a lot of brands doing that as well?

8:51What's unique? Yeah. So the unique thing about us is two things. So the first is there are very, very few brands that have, you know, 100 people at the stage we are working behind the scenes. So there are very few brands which can afford to spend close to$100 million now on research and ingredients. And so the unique aspect of it is we approach beauty from very much a product innovation standpoint and not a marketing innovation standpoint. And so that's kind of like the scientist in me. So what we say about Dende is Dende is the first brand we feel that's able to just purely go out there with product innovation, both on ingredients, formulation formats.

9:30So that's the first thing, like rooted in science, 80 scientists, new ingredients. And the motto or kind of, I suppose, thesis we have at Dende is we do not release an ingredient unless we have both the preclinical data and the clinical data on new ingredients to show that it does kind of raise the bar. We've had many examples over the last three years where we've brought through ingredients through biotech and they've been okay. They haven't been incredible. And so we don't launch them, right? And so it's a really high bar. And I think that's a really differentiated standpoint for Dendo versus these other clinical or Durham led.

10:07Not all of those brands have access to new ingredients. They still do what everyone else does, which they go to one of the 800 contract manufacturers and they have the same formulation ingredients, the same technology. And then it's all about the marketing innovation. It's about how they speak to it and describe the products. What we've learned is you need to be able to speak and describe the products. And there has to be that human element of the brand. But what people really care is about performance. And Dende is all about performance, addressing new skin health care concerns, really bringing from new ingredients, formulation formats.

10:41And that's what gets us excited. So it's this combination, kind of the pull and push between marketing and product. Got it. Got it. So in January of 2024, Women's Wear Daily anointed Inflamaging as the wellness word to watch. And I've certainly seen it proliferate throughout this year and looking ahead to 2025, the same thing. But what is Inflamaging exactly? Because and how is it different than simply just aging? We're all aging every single day. I'd like to know the distinction. Yeah, great question. And I think if you want to talk about luck in a brand, there is nothing more lucky than launching a brand in January and then WWD.

11:21So this brand is rooted in luck and I do appreciate it. Inflammaging to me as more of the science side is anti-inflammatory and anti-aging, right? Kind of coming together. Now, the pure difference I think behind inflammation versus just other anti-aging is inflammation looks at the root cause of aging. So if I think about anti-aging, I normally think about reduction to fine lines and wrinkles and like the physical appearance of it. When I think about inflammation or inflammation, I think about it going down towards more of the root cause and to try to understand what leads to the wrinkles, right?

11:57What leads to the fine lines and how do we stop it there? So it's more preventative. And Denday's positioned as a preventative skin line, using the most up-to-date science to kind of stop it at the beginning or control it at the beginning, not just providing kind of relief at the end, if that makes sense. We're not trying to just say, if you apply this for eight to 12 weeks, you'll see reduction in fine lines and wrinkles. There are many brands that do that, and they do it really, really well. It's more about how do we stop and control that? How do we provide the science to do that there? Does that answer the question?

12:30Yeah. Let's dive into that a little bit more because if you're an ancient beauty editor like Jill and I, you'll remember Dr. Perricone from Dr. Perricone MD from at least 20 years ago when he came out with his line and he's a dermatologist. And he really popularized the term inflammation in the realm of skincare. and the approach back then was really about anti-inflammation from the inside and out. So he talked a lot about diet. He had books. There was a lot of education. Supplements were a big thing and then also the products themselves. So it was a 360 approach. 20 years later, what is your approach to inflammation more specifically when you talk about, you know not just applying this cream and looking at what's happening eight to 12 weeks later and and getting at the root of it what does that actually look like i think the difference is number one the science has come along so so far and so i'll give you one example when we test ingredients at dende we look at the 30 000 genes that it activates in your skin we have a really deep and complex understanding of the science behind it.

13:51I will say that we do it topically, as you know, we've got the product, then there's a topical skincare brand. And that's kind of our first approach. Now, whether we go to ingestible beauty in the next few years, I think you can imagine that's a thing that's going to come through. We really do believe that. But it's a combination. It's never just going to be a one thing fits all. It's a combination of the topical products that we sell and people use combined with diet, combined with exercise, combined with a lifestyle. Can one brand address all that? I think we're going to find out, right? But inflammation is a very, very complex thing.

14:29It is a very complex field to try and address. And a little teaser, I think what you'll see with Dende in the next few years is different ingredients trying to hit different parts of inflammation. And that just tends to go show you just how complex that is. So, you know, what happened 20 years ago, he was completely right in what he was seeing. I think it's just always about trying to take the scientific advances and match the great products to the scientific advances. Let's dive into the science a bit more and your star ingredients. So I think typically the approach to inflammation has been about antioxidants, powerhouse antioxidants that are going to help.

15:11But Dende, I think maybe it requires a little bit more understanding. So I'm going to read this. This came from the brief. I'm going to read this verbatim. Dende is powered by a novel and patented biotech ingredient. Naren Jenin is produced with a patented pharma-like process that delivers 99 % plus purity per batch, is a powerhouse polyphenol scientifically proven to outperform niacinamide by 15 times at reducing the signs of inflammation resetting skin to neutral so tell us what this ingredient is and i think we also have to flag this is giving niacinamide a run for its money that's kind of big news because niacinamide has been dominating the skin kerosene in the past couple of years Yeah, I also love niacinamide.

16:01Niacinamide is clinically proven to do what it does, right? If it's in product, it works. I think what we really got excited about was the synergistic ability of new ingredients to play with niacinamide. And it goes back to the product innovation we spoke at the beginning, which was niacinamide has been proven at a specific amount in a product, right? And it should be used to that amount. Product innovation for the last five to 10 years in niacinamide has been about how much can I load into a formulation? And the marketing language has been, how do I get 10%, 15%, 20 %? And now it's led to skin sensitization issues right across the population.

16:39So when we look at outperforming niacinamide, it's in specific areas, but we think these ingredients play together. They play together in a formulation at the right concentrations. And it means that you can kind of offset the benefits of one with the downside of the other. So when we look at inflammation, we look at things like skin strengthening activation. And so the way we test ingredients at DEBU is, like I said, we not only do it at the gene level, where we look at 30 ,000 genes per skin sample, if you will. We also look at what proteins are made. We do clinical testing of 30 people, double-blind placebo.

17:18And so what we found is that it upregulated skin barrier genes, it downregulated inflammation genes like niacinamide. But where we really saw a major difference was in IL-6. So IL-6 is an inflammatory marker that's used to kind of quantify how powerful this is. And what we saw is that versus niacinamide, you could have less of naringen and get a better result. And so it's not like it's beating niacinamide. It beats it in that one area, but it has to be synergistic. You can't just strip out niacinamide from a formulation. You can't strip out naringen. What Dende really stands for is having potent scientifically backed formulations.

18:00And that requires chemists and skin science experts coming together to work with it. And so, you know, we, the data is online, we'll be publishing it now, you know, in February to show everyone so they can go through and do it. But I think this, the word of the day is synergistic here, which is, you know, product innovation should come from new ingredients able to hit very specific pathways to make formulations better. It shouldn't just be loaded into a formulation to try and make it better. Right. And I don't know if you agree with that because you are the experts here, but that's how we approach it.

18:37Yeah, for sure. It's about getting the cocktail right. Yes, exactly. I think we've learned that from the day of these, you know, single ingredient formulas that really destroyed people's skin barrier. So to be clear, what has Naren Jenin been scientifically proven to achieve when it comes to inflammation? aging? Yeah. So in terms of the clinical testing that went on, it was a placebo-controlled, double-blind study with 30 participants per group. So the concentration that it's in the Dende products, which I think you guys have, what we saw versus the placebo, it was better in skin moisturization, elasticity, and then against the baseline, the formulation, skin redness, fine lines and wrinkles, deep wrinkles.

19:22And if we look at kind of the data we got from the panel, then it was 100 % of panelists showed improvement in skin moisturization, elasticity. And then when we go to deep wrinkles, fine lines, skin redness, it's between 88 % and 97 % of panelists. But that's on the formulation, not just the ingredients. So I think that's, you know, you guys obviously understand that, but some people don't. The difference between the ingredient clinical testing and the product clinical testing. And Dende is a brand that not only does the ingredient clinical testing, but we spend, you know, per product for all the testings about a quarter million dollars.

19:59I know. That's a lot. That's double what we've heard. Typically people say it's about a hundred thousand to do the clinicals. It is for the product, but once you add in the ingredient clinical testing, the product clinical testing, all the preclinical, all the formulation stuff, that's how much it typically costs. And so when we talk about kind of barriers and why Dende approaches it that way, is that we, you know, we have, we're lucky enough to have the financial backing to try and make these products, to try and make these ingredients, to bring them through to people. This might be a dumb question, but the preparatory ingredient, I think people might have the same question as me.

20:38It's not at all stemming from niacinamide. This is completely novel in a Petri dish kind of thing. Like, what is it? Is it an antioxidant or is it a protein? Like, what is it? Yeah, I don't, I don't really understand how it's just like, poof, we have like, do you know what I mean? How do you do that? No, great question. And maybe we should have covered that before I jumped into the science. Okay. So what I like to think about biotech is, do you drink wine? Do we like beer? Okay. Why not? Sure. Yes. Same, cab, right? All right. So the way that's made is, you know, you get sugar water, grape juice, and you put in a microbe and the microbe turns that sugar into alcohol.

21:21Okay. and that's the process of fermentation. What we do at Debut is we go out into nature and we find very, very tiny, rare amounts of these new molecules out in nature. So we screen 7 ,000 brand new molecules that no one has ever heard of. And out of that kind of pool, we found one that we believe was really good for inflammation, which was naringenin. It's a brand new molecule. It's actually originally found in the skins of grapefruits. If you look at denday.com, you'll see like, some grapefruit imagery. So the real kick behind what we're able to do on the science side is we say, okay, well, modern science enables us to go, we know how the grapefruit makes it.

22:05So we are going to take how the grapefruit makes it. And we're going to go in and tell that microbe that instead of making alcohol, like it does in the wine process, we go in and we say, we do some molecular biology and we go in and say, now you're going to take sugar and you're going to make naringen. And so what this allows us to do for naringen and the new ingredients coming through Dende is you can start taking ingredients that are found in such small, rare amounts in nature that without biotechnology, they would never come to the forefront of products because you'd never be able to create enough of them.

22:36And that's like the truly exciting thing is that you've suddenly just taken, you know, in beauty, there's probably 10 to 20 like common ingredients for activation. And now you've just taken that group and you've just unlocked it to 7 ,000. There's the role of Dende to really say which of those 7 ,000 are going to be used in beauty and why. And then you have a team of 80 scientists behind them going, okay, we love that ingredient. It's no one else has it. It's rare. It does this, it does that. And we've proven it clinically. Now we have to make it the same way as we brew beer. And that's kind of how Naren Janin came to life.

23:12And if you came to our labs down in San Diego, you would see the way we make it isn't by going out and cutting down grapefruits and trying to find little amounts of this, it's exactly the same way as a beer fermentation process. It is the tanks are turning, the sugar water is being converted into naringenine. And then we extract it, we take it out of there and put it into our skincare formulations. And that's the level of science and brand that have to come together to make it special. Thank you. That makes sense. I can go more into this. I'm obviously super excited by this concept, but fermentation is the way forward.

23:50There's zero pesticides, tiny amounts of land, tiny amounts of CO2, low amounts of water. And currently, the first thing you said was the 99.9%. That is because we create the ingredients in this fermentation process the same way as you would ferment a pharmaceutical ingredient. So it's always consistent, the same. There's no external environmental changes. It is a control process in a facility to always make high purity and potency ingredients. And that's the real crux of biotech. Now, I just wanted to circle back. You mentioned how much this product as a whole, these formulas, improved wrinkles and moisture and those things.