Latest / The Science of Skin / A Deep Dive with the Founder and Chairman of Glo Pharma, Lauren Otsuki

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A Deep Dive with the Founder and Chairman of Glo Pharma, Lauren Otsuki · The Science of Skin

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: This episode of Skincare Confidential is sponsored by RSelf.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: RSelf is a science-first skincare company created by the founders of Skin Medica and Elastin.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Leveraging 20 years of biotech and skincare expertise, RSelf developed a scientifically advanced delivery technology that redefines what's possible in cosmetic skincare.
• 0:18
  SPEAKER_01: Utilizing patented tiered-released vesicles, RSelf Hero products ensure deep ingredient delivery, sending larger molecules, powerful peptides, and all-in-one formulations directly to the layer of the skin where they're needed the most.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_01: As part of a complete powerhouse portfolio of daily regimen products, RSelf developed the first needle-free lip filler, clinically proven to restore volume by delivering hyaluronic acid into the lips topically.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: To learn more, visit www.rself.com.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: Hello and welcome to Skincare Confidential, a podcast supporting the Science of Skin Care Summit, an educational conference occurring November 8th through the 10th in Austin, Texas, in 2024.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_01: My name is Dr.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: Ted Lane.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a board certified dermatologist.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_01: I am the host of this week's episode, and I am so excited to have Lauren Otsuki with us.
• 1:21
  SPEAKER_01: Now, Lauren is someone who many of you may not know, but is such an important person, maybe in the background of skincare.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_01: But we're really excited to have her on the show with us.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_01: She is a co-founder and chairman of RSelf and its parent company, Glow Pharma, and we'll go into RSelf later on.
• 1:42
  SPEAKER_01: She is a distinguished leader in biotechnology innovation with over 35 years of experience in the field.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: She's founded, developed, and commercialized eight different companies, including in diverse areas such as cardiology, gastroenterology, diabetes, oncology, and of course aesthetics.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: Many of you will recognize some of these names, including DEXCOM, which of course is that glucose monitoring device, uh, Novicardia, Oncturnal Therapeutics, and then Prometheus Biosciences is one that was relatively recently acquired by Merck, right?
• 2:18
  SPEAKER_01: That's correct.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_01: So just a huge player, not only in skincare, but honestly in medicine overall.
• 2:26
  SPEAKER_01: So, Lauren, thank you so much for spending some time with us.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_01: It's so nice to have you.
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, absolutely my pleasure.
• 2:33
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let's okay, so so what an interesting kind of history you have.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so a lot of time spent in biotech in diverse areas.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: How did that lead you to aesthetics?
• 2:46
  SPEAKER_00: Well, um, I think I originally got very interested in aesthetics for primarily personal reasons, a little bit, because I'm aging and I wanted some better products to use.
• 2:58
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, and then as you know, I got more involved in um working with um our co-founder, Scott Glenn, I realized that there was a lot that we could contribute to the advancement of skincare products just by utilizing some of the practices and strategies that we had used very successfully in the life science, drug and device product development area.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of how we got there, but it it's it's so exciting to work with products that you and your friends can actually use.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: That's yeah, that's very true.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: Now you were talking about Scott.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, we talked about Glow Pharma, right, which is a parent company for ourselves.
• 3:39
  SPEAKER_01: And G L O are is an acronym essentially.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's Scott Glenn, and you're the O, and then who's the L?
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh Robert Love.
• 3:49
  SPEAKER_00: And he's yeah, he's um the protein um structure-based design chemist that works for us.
• 3:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, gotcha.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: And we've worked with him on numerous other oncology and drug development companies.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: You kind of are the dream team in biotech and and aesthetics, is what it sounds like.
• 4:07
  SPEAKER_01: The three of you guys really work well together.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, absolutely.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I've worked with Scott for for 30 plus years.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: So, and all of the companies that you that you named were um co-founded with Scott Glenn.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
• 4:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you were saying that you take kind of what you what you have used in the biotech industry and applied it to the aesthetic industry and skincare.
• 4:29
  SPEAKER_01: Can we kind of dive into that a little bit more?
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Do you mean kind of like ingredient discovery, or do you mean more on the kind of delivery platform?
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you know, I think that the ingredient discovery and delivery platform are part of the outcome of that, but it's really more looking strategically at the sector and saying, what is the unmet need in this area?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: And how can technology or products address it?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_00: Is this product or or technology that we can develop and take to market?
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and is there a way to patent and protect this product technology?
• 5:06
  SPEAKER_00: So those are kind of the real basic things that we apply.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, the concept of having a patent portfolio for an aesthetics um cosmetic company was was very novel when we were when we were um starting up Elastin.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: It's become much more um accepted and is something that people are doing, but um and it's at the heart of of what we do in life science.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_01: So you mentioned Elastin, and I kind of buried the lead there.
• 5:37
  SPEAKER_01: Lauren helped start Alastin.
• 5:39
  SPEAKER_01: She's a co-founder of Elastin, which many of us know was was acquired by Gal Derma and has now gone worldwide.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, but before even Alastin, you you were involved in Skin Medica, right?
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, Scott Glenn and um uh Windermere Venture Partners, which was our little um seed financing firm, okay.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: Um uh did some of the first investments with um Skin Medica and followed it along.
• 6:04
  SPEAKER_00: And then we, when we started Elastin, we had a lot of ex-Skin Medica people with us.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: And what was the genesis of Elastin?
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, you and I were discussing this a little bit uh maybe last week, where you know elastin came from the idea that that everybody was looking at these suppliers for ingredients, but you felt there was a way to have kind of homegrown ingredients that you could have the patents for and really protect.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 6:30
  SPEAKER_00: And I, you know, I think if you roll back to what was the what was the um the common thread amongst all of these, and and really, whether it's Skin Medica, Elastin or Ourself by Glow Pharma, it's really innovation and making sure that there's an innovation that's going to bring a product to the market that really wasn't in existence before.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And um Skin Medica, um, you know, they were the first people to ever put any science into their ingredients.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: That was just such a, you know, such an eye-opening thing for this the beauty skincare market.
• 7:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the, you know, this TNS serum that comes from the fibroblasts, it's the the supernatant off of fibroblast cultures, and they took it, concentrated it, and stuck it in a product.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: And and um that was quite the revelation at the time.
• 7:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, what we we saw with elastin was an opportunity.
• 7:28
  SPEAKER_00: So the the the TNS product is a mixture of many different uh whether they're cofactors, peptides, or other um uh small um proteins and molecules.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: Essentially that which is made by the fibroblast, right?
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_00: Right, but not necessarily well defined.
• 7:48
  SPEAKER_00: There's like thousands of things that are in the that are made by fibrous.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: And um uh with elastin, we were focusing.
• 7:59
  SPEAKER_00: Well, first of all, we were we were focusing the big unmet need was no pre- and post-procedure care uh for the for the laser ablation ablative treatments.
• 8:10
  SPEAKER_00: And we um were looking at very pure um peptides and other um molecules to help with uh that that pre and post uh procedure care.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the you know, the technology leap was we need to move into things that are specifically addressing um, you know, this healing process that we want to help nurture in that pre- and post-care um uh uh environment.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: And I think that um that specific targeting is something that other people didn't do quite until Alastin came along.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um so it's just interesting, isn't it?
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, sorry to interrupt, but I'm just thinking about I mean, disruption number one in the industry was Skin Medica looking at using actual science and and the scientific method to apply to skincare, right?
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: Right, right.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_01: And maybe they didn't really understand everything that was involved in it with all the different ingredients included in that in that fibroblast growth media, but they they understood how to test it clinically, and I and I think that was a big leap forward.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_01: And then leap forward number two that you were involved with is elastin, where you realized that there was this you know huge unmet need for periprocedural, what we call integrated skincare, because we had all these great devices that were doing ablative and not ablative work, but you realized that you know, with good skincare, you could prepare the skin pre and then reduce downtime post and augment augment results as well.
• 9:43
  SPEAKER_01: So so two disruptions that we've just talked about just to just to set the ground for for how important you are in this field, like twice we've disrupted the entire skincare industry.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm sorry I interrupted, go ahead with with um elastin and and that and you were saying that you found these individualized peptides, right?
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_00: And and you know, we were very focused on certain mechanisms within the skin and um and looking at because of that, very specific peptides.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then, you know, what as we were working on elastin and um you know in between, um Scott and I were talking about, you know, if we did another company, what would we do?
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And one of the things that I always thought was an unmet need um from a technology perspective was delivery system technology because you can make all the great ingredients in the world, but unless you can get them to the target, it doesn't matter.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: So that and and that's part of um uh uh you know, part of the the thing that people that are developing drugs always pay a lot of attention to, right?
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: It's target occupancy, it's all you know, all of that.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_00: And uh, you know, it's not something that most people in the cosmet on the cosmetic side look at very much.
• 11:01
  SPEAKER_01: So yeah, you know, because of PK and PD data, the the topical therapeutics really think about how do they achieve penetration and overcoming the skin barrier.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_01: That kind of data is not required for for topical skin care, right?
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: They don't have to present anything to the FDA.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so they don't have to spend a bunch of time thinking about that.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: But to your point, you know, it's in some ways, if you're if you're formulating for post-procedure where we've totally ablated the epidermis, it's not there, worrying about penetration isn't that big of a deal.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 11:35
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: That's exactly right.
• 11:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um but if you're doing something for daily use, like you know, Alasta now has progressed from just periprocedural to more daily use products, then you got to start thinking about drug delivery and and delivery systems, to your point.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, that that um uh daily use product is really where we're focused, right?
• 11:59
  SPEAKER_00: We um we want people to use our products every day to achieve what they want to achieve.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah.
• 12:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I completely agree with you.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: I get asked all the time, you know, if I have a certain money amount amount of money to spend, how should I spend it?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: Should I do a chemical peel?
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: Should I do a laser treatment?
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: And this is my budget for the year.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I and I truly believe this when I say I think the very best money you can spend is on your skincare that you use on a daily basis.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, because we have the data to show that we can achieve really great transformation of the skin, but it has to be used consistently.
• 12:36
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and you will regress if you stop using it.
• 12:39
  SPEAKER_01: It's like an investment that you make that you have to keep supporting.
• 12:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think I'm completely on the same page uh as you and and and Scott Glenn, in terms of how you're thinking about you know, ways to achieve change in the skin.
• 12:52
  SPEAKER_01: It requires daily, great skincare.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, absolutely.
• 12:56
  SPEAKER_01: So so as you've thought about now you've gone from kind of these proprietary peptides, you've you've kind of focused on periprocedural.
• 13:03
  SPEAKER_01: Now you've, as you said, you said, okay, um, that's done.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's kind of that baby is kind of growing up, and and I'll let somebody else take over that.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now you're thinking about ourselves, right?
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so you formed this new company, Glow Pharma, and ourselves is your first skincare line within Glow Pharma.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: Am I am I right about that?
• 13:19
  SPEAKER_00: That's correct.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_01: And and let's talk about that now.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_01: Let's talk about this novel delivery system that that you worked with.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it kind of came from a professor's lab, right?
• 13:31
  SPEAKER_01: Weren't we talking about that?
• 13:32
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 13:33
  SPEAKER_00: So at the very beginning, because we knew how important um getting a good delivery system was to our strategy.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so that having a good delivery system not only allows you to, you know, get your ingredients to where they need to be, but because the kind of system that we have is is so powerful and so flexible, it also allows us to put in much larger ingredients into the skin than other technologies can, which is a huge benefit for this kind of technology.
• 14:08
  SPEAKER_00: But we we did understand its importance, and we in the early stages of the company, we probably spent six to twelve months looking at a lot of different technologies, whether from patents or from publications or or um other leads that we had, and then we chose three or four of the most promising technologies and we built products with them, or we tried to build some products with them, and we we ran various experiments and um chose the uh delivery system that was able to encapsulate and deliver the optimum number of components, and that is it has turned into our tiered release vesicle.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the scientist, as you pointed out, who worked on a lot of the uh development and is the um the inventor on the patent.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: We just got our first US patent on this product in November of last year.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um and she's been working, I mean, this is her life's work.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_00: She's been working in this field for 30 years.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_00: She's the head of um nanotechnology at the University of uh Waterloo in Canada.
• 15:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um the early work that she did on transdermal um delivery was done for insulin, antivirals, and some other um large polar molecules, like she did some experimental work with plasma D RNA.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: And her her um all of her published work was what gave us a little bit of um assurance that we were going to be able to get some of the the ingredients that we were very interested in um to be delivered into the skin.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_00: And um, you know, all of the experimentation proved it out, and um that's how uh the teared release vesicle was born.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: So that this teared release vesicle is is the delivery system that underlies kind of the the it's the foundational, I'm gonna say ingredient, the foundational technology for ourselves, right?
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: It's in all the hero skews.
• 16:21
  SPEAKER_00: So the lip filler, the HA replenishing serum, the HA replenishing eye serum, and dark spot intercept all have this tiered release vesicle.
• 16:32
  SPEAKER_00: And the beauty of it is you can change some the formulation slightly depending on the payload that you want to deliver, and you can deliver to different levels in the skin and very different classes of molecules.
• 16:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's just amazing to think about because you you literally can dial in the level, the size, uh, the concentration, it sounds like like it it really is so customizable that it's it almost kind of is mind-boggling in terms of the opportunity that this delivery system offers.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think there are you know the many, many, many things that we can encapsulate.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_00: And also, because the the the way the vesicle is formed, it can hold quite a bit of payload.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_00: Quite a bit of payload, like five to six to ten times more than a liposome.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_01: So so a couple of things to talk about then.
• 17:27
  SPEAKER_01: In in terms of delivering through the stratum corneum, right?
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: That brick and mortar model, which, you know, as as we know, the stratum corneum's sole job is to keep things out, essentially, right?
• 17:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there are aquapores, there are ways for for small molecules to penetrate, but but it can you explain in in in relatively high-level terms kind of how this vesicular system works to be able to overcome that stratum corneum?
• 17:55
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we have what we call penetration enhancers, and the the exact um ratios of these along with other lipids that we have in our formulation are part of what's part of our patent.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and these um enhancers interact with uh the mortar of the of the stratum corneum and turn it from a really solid um surface into something that looks more like a sponge and has a lot of pores in it.
• 18:25
  SPEAKER_00: And those pores are temporarily there as the vesicle is is passing through, and then they close up back behind it.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so what a great analogy, right?
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_01: It it goes from kind of what what would be a board almost into a sponge.
• 18:38
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you turn it into a sponge, you're able to to achieve penetration.
• 18:43
  SPEAKER_01: And many of the ingredients, well, many some of the formulations have hyaluronic acid as the payload, if if I can use that analogy as well.
• 18:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, hyaluronic acid isn't the easiest, right?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_01: Especially it has no, let's talk about that because I mean to to use that as your first molecule is is quite an achievement.
• 19:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, you know, um the technology was demonstrated to be able to deliver plasmid RNA, which what which is like four million molecular weight.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_00: So it's gigantic and it's highly polar.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_00: So we knew, and uh however it is, it is, you know, tends to be in a sphere, so it's it's a little easier to handle in that respect.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yes, hyaluronic acid is very polar, very water soluble, and it's long and difficult to manage because it's a long, long thread, if you will.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: And in order for it to hold enough water to hydrate a layer in your skin, it's got to be about 50,000 molecular weight at the minimum.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 19:50
  SPEAKER_00: And we have in our product 50,000 and 250,000 molecular weight HA.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: And we've gone through a lot of um uh laboratory work to sh to demonstrate the penetration of those two um species of hyaluronic acid.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_00: Um it's yeah, it's it's the production of it of the product is a bit, you know, it's it's uh highly uh technical and requires a lot of um specialized um training and whatnot to produce the product.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: But once you once you can do that, it's very reliable.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_01: So just to give people some context, right, when we talk about other products that have hyaluronic acid, we're talking about many products have either single or multi-weight um HA.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 20:38
  SPEAKER_01: And but when we're talking about the multi-weight, it's usually kind of 2,000 to 3,000 and and maybe you know 50 to 60 in the small molecular weight.
• 20:46
  SPEAKER_01: Um, with the idea is that the the larger molecular weight HA tends to lay on the top of the skin, it doesn't penetrate well, and the smaller ones, the smaller molecular weight does penetrate because it's a much smaller molecule and it can uh it can help hydrate.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_01: But when you're talking about that huge size of a molecule, you can imagine the water binding capability to your point and the ability to quickly hydrate.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_01: And now I understand why you worked on the lips first, because it's a quick lip plump, right?
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, yeah.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: So so when you're able to deliver a humectant like that into the skin or in the lip, it immediately draws in water and it becomes a much larger molecule, and that helps to give a plumping and lifting effect.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: Uh yeah, and likewise for the skin, right?
• 21:31
  SPEAKER_01: If you were to apply it consistently, you could help with fine lines and wrinkles feasibly because you're increasing the turger or you know, the plumpness of the skin, with uh especially in the in the dermis, that second layer where hyaluronic acid is one of the major components of the second layer of the of the skin.
• 21:49
  SPEAKER_01: So, this just to give people an idea of what we're talking about, Lauren.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_01: So that is uh that's really incredible.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_01: And as you have moved forward now with your brightening serum, you've got other ingredients besides the H A, right?
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 22:02
  SPEAKER_00: So you alluded to this a little bit in the um previously that we do have some innovative peptides, and we have um we have a couple of them that we um have designed based on looking at some unique targets in the skin.
• 22:19
  SPEAKER_00: And um because because we have the L and Glow as part of our staff, we have the capability to design um different kinds of peptides that can work in this area.
• 22:31
  SPEAKER_00: And that it it it sounds like it should be fairly straightforward, but it involves a lot of analytical um expertise that you need to have to know that when you change, you know, you have one sequence and you change it to another sequence that it changes or doesn't change, improves or doesn't improve the potency of the little peptide that you made.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_00: And we usually make 12 to 14 amino acid peptides.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so very small short chain peptides essentially.
• 22:59
  SPEAKER_00: Short chain, but still um in the um 1400 to 2000 molecular weight, so way too large to ever penetrate on their own.
• 23:10
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, gotcha.
• 23:11
  SPEAKER_01: Hence the need for the vesicular system.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 23:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, one of the big kind of themes, but innovations in skincare, maybe not so much of an innovation when you start thinking about Skin Medica 15, 20 years ago, but but is exosomes, right?
• 23:27
  SPEAKER_01: Which, as we talked about, is is a you know liposomal or nanoliposomal, nanovasicular delivery system as well.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: Um, skin skin medicas TNS serum uh probably works because of the exosomes that it has in it, if we're completely honest.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_01: And and I think Raul Meta said that to us in a podcast episode.
• 23:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so now we've got this vesicular uh delivery system.
• 23:53
  SPEAKER_01: Can you explain to us how that differs from a naturally occurring exosome?
• 23:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so because we first of all we have multiple layers, so we're about, I don't know, somewhere north of 15 to 20 layers within that liposome, all phospholipid, and we we have captured in it these little packets that have the payloads that we're interested in delivering.
• 24:19
  SPEAKER_00: So we and we can deliver about five to six and upwards of sometimes 10 times what you can get into a liposome just because of the way we encapsulate the product, and also because liposomes themselves are a lipid bilayer, but the bilayer in and of itself has no special properties that allow it to penetrate.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_00: So, and and because if you think about their genesis, right, they're made by cells that are already in the skin or in the body.
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_00: So they all all they are is a lipid bilayer that packages up some certain things and and then gets excreted out into the cellular matrix.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_00: So they're not they're not geared to um cross the stratum corneum.
• 25:07
  SPEAKER_00: And our whereas our engineered vesicles really, I mean, that's their job to cross the strength of corneum and carry a very big payload.
• 25:15
  SPEAKER_01: So it would be it would minimize, I think, the science behind your vesicular delivery system to say they are biosynthetic exosomes.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_01: Would you agree with that?
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I don't think we're exosomes, I mean, yeah, exosomes just imply a whole different way of the of being manufactured, right?
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_00: They're manufactured by the cell, whether it's the fiberblast or the platelet, yeah, it um you know it's it's it's a cell that's making it.
• 25:51
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, I mean anything that's coming from a biological system like that, a human biological system, has has other other factors that um you know are at play.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 26:03
  SPEAKER_01: So in other words, has RNA, DNA, and and other biological molecules in there.
• 26:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, yeah, which may or may not be infectious and or may or may not be pro-inflammatory and and it it's a whole it's a whole different um um area of um you know sort of biology.
• 26:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I think um it's very clever to have, you know, that that these people are using this stuff, but they're I think they work much better in um in situations where the skin is ablated.
• 26:37
  SPEAKER_01: Yes.
• 26:38
  SPEAKER_00: So so you see them pairing exosomes with um microderm ablation or any any sort of um um microneedling, other kinds of procedures, but it doesn't really lend itself so much that the exosome itself because of its need for some sort of ablation to everyday skin care, effective everyday skincare.
• 27:04
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: Because you need you need a meth, you need a method that's that's really practiced only in the doctor's office.
• 27:12
  SPEAKER_01: No, I I totally understand what you're saying.
• 27:13
  SPEAKER_01: And quite frankly, we don't have a lot of data to support the use of exosomes post-procedurally, like post-ablative.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: We need more data on that.
• 27:21
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think anecdotally we hear it from a lot of different people, but one would imagine something like your product with the with the vesicular delivery system that is engineered to we know exactly what's inside of those vesicles.
• 27:34
  SPEAKER_01: We know exactly how the vesicles are produced as well.
• 27:37
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we know what molecules are needed in order to cause penetration, maybe a little bit more sterile and maybe a little bit more safe as well, knowing that we know exactly from batch to batch what's inside.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_01: That's just me surmising that.
• 27:51
  SPEAKER_00: Well, certainly much more defined.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, okay.
• 27:55
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, much more defined.
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's defining is what we need in the exosome world as well, like defining exactly what's inside all the exosomes and all of that.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_01: Not and there's a lot of work going on uh around that as well.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, okay, so you know, thank you for going over everything there.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_01: And and as we we only have a couple of minutes left, and so I just wanted to kind of use all of your experience to help our listeners, right?
• 28:20
  SPEAKER_01: If if if there's someone who has, let's say they work in in a university or they they have access to technology um through through a colleague that they think, oh, this could be applied to um the skincare space.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: What are the first steps for them?
• 28:37
  SPEAKER_01: Like how do you even get started?
• 28:38
  SPEAKER_01: You've done this over and over, and so for you, this is kind of old hat, but but for those just getting started, what is the first step to take a new technology and see if it can be applied to the skin?
• 28:49
  SPEAKER_01: For skincare.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, you know, I I think that you always have to start with the market and the market need, right?
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So you have to make sure that your technology and the area um in which you're gonna apply it represents a large potential market with an unmet need, and your product has to address that need in a very meaningful way, meaning in a way that distinguishes it from whatever is the current practice.
• 29:17
  SPEAKER_00: And you if you that's a huge first step, and you know, you've got to be cognizant of what the rest of the competition is doing, how it's gonna be received by the by the customer and the physician.
• 29:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you know, I think from an investment perspective, um, it's always nice if there's some kind of pathway to patent protection.
• 29:37
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 29:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and a lot of times, unfortunately, people that are in universities get hand they get tied up with the university tech transfer office and that aspect.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um you know, I think also having done lots of financing for life science companies as well as um skincare companies, they're very different investors.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 30:03
  SPEAKER_00: And the the the kind of um, I mean, one of the things that makes, you know, some of the companies like Elastin and um uh Glow Pharma um a little more of a challenge to to um finance is that we we invest a lot of money in RD.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 30:24
  SPEAKER_00: Many of the skincare companies and many of the investors who go into skincare um investments aren't used to large um RD uh expenditures.
• 30:36
  SPEAKER_00: But that's what you have to do if you want a product that works and is differentiated and protected.
• 30:43
  SPEAKER_00: And you just can't get that without spending some money on it.
• 30:47
  SPEAKER_00: So I, you know, understanding who you're you're um who you're going to to um put the uh investment group together is is really important.
• 30:58
  SPEAKER_01: Um you know, and it's just I just want to highlight that, you know, in skincare now it's it's not just finding that ingredient from a supplier and putting it into perhaps a novel formulation or getting a celebrity name behind it.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_01: Um I think I think we have matured beyond that as an industry, and and I think we have higher expectations for the science and the clinicals behind the products and also the efficacy of the product as well.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_01: So just to reiterate, you know, it it's going to take a patient investor probably in order to really develop something that can become successful, a la the elastin line recently, you know.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: Right, right.
• 31:37
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, also the other the other catch in all of this is because the the science-backed skincare is kind of in between the more consumer-oriented kind of product and the very life science-oriented product, the um the expectations of investors for the return that they're gonna get is very different because life science drug development investors expect very large returns.
• 32:05
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 32:06
  SPEAKER_00: And um on the other side, the returns aren't as large, but also the investment's not as big.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: So it's that's why I'm saying it's a very you gotta be make sure you know who you're going to and and how you're going to navigate that gap.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 32:19
  SPEAKER_01: Make sure your investor understands the space, in other words.
• 32:22
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 32:23
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, got it.
• 32:24
  SPEAKER_01: Lauren, thank you so much.
• 32:26
  SPEAKER_01: I so appreciate your time and your sharing your wisdom and experience with us.
• 32:30
  SPEAKER_01: And um, I just thoroughly enjoyed it.
• 32:32
  SPEAKER_01: I got to know much more about you and your experience and your history and also how you view the skincare industry, which aligns with the way a lot of the doctors are viewing the skincare industry as well, as we realize it's important.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: So it's so great to see someone with with such a very strong biotech and scientific background really kind of pushing the industry forward.
• 32:54
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you for the opportunity.
• 32:56
  SPEAKER_00: We uh we love to share the the ourself story.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_00: So if you think of anything else you want to ask us, please throw your questions our way.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, great.
• 33:06
  SPEAKER_01: So that is uh so that's Laura Nozuki.
• 33:10
  SPEAKER_01: She is one of the founders of Glow Pharma, and Glow uh has started a skincare line called Ourself, which is I'm sure available online.
• 33:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh and uh this is Dr.
• 33:21
  SPEAKER_01: Ted Lane.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_01: I am your host for today.
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: Please, if you like the episode, give us a like, share, and subscribe as well.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_01: All right, thank you, everybody.
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_01: This episode of Skincare Confidential is sponsored by RSelf.
• 33:35
  SPEAKER_01: RSelf is a science-first skincare company created by the founders of Skin Medica and Elastin.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_01: Leveraging 20 years of biotech and skincare expertise, RSelf developed a scientifically advanced delivery technology that redefines what's possible in cosmetic skincare.
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Utilizing patented tiered released vesicles, RSelf Hero products ensure deep ingredient delivery, sending larger molecules, powerful peptides, and all in one formulations directly to the layer of the skin where they're needed the most.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_01: As part of a complete powerhouse portfolio of daily regimen products, RSelf developed the first needle free lip filler, clinically proven to restore volume by delivering hyaluronic acid into the lips topically.
• 34:16
  SPEAKER_01: To learn more, visit www.rself.com.