After almost 20 years without any noteworthy progress in the sensitive area of sun protection, several innovations emerged over the past few months. These include Skinosive’s, which is focused on enhancing the duration of sunscreen efficacy.
“Few people apply their sun protections every two hours, as health authorities recommend, and yet, the longer you wait, the more UV filters lose efficacy, which means users are ill-protected. So, as part of our R&D strategy, we aimed to prolong the efficacy of UV protection. That is how we developed the bio-adhesion innovation, a chemical process to make filters adhere to the skin,” explains Benoît Canolle, CEO of Skinosive, a biotech startup composed of a team of ten young researchers.
Molecular “hooks”
The technology involves modifying UV filters available on the market so they can bind to the skin surface.
“We create new chemical molecules, i.e. new UV filters, based on existing ones, which contain proprietary bio-adhesive groups within their structures. These bio-adhesive groups bind to the structures naturally found in the skin’s stratum corneum. They act like a molecular ‘hook’ that can settle in the skin’s natural structures,” explains Canolle.
UV filter bio-adhesion was clinically validated up to eight hours after application. In addition, this innovation avoids systemic penetration in the skin, and also curbs the release of chemical molecules into the environment.
“It helps alleviate the environmental impact of our filters because, on the one hand, users will apply their sun products less frequently, and on the other, it allows for more reasoned production. Production of UV filters actually represents a significant part of their environmental footprint, and this issue is hardly ever dealt with,” says Canolle.
A long regulatory pathway
The first molecule developed by Skinosive is a bio-adhesive version of Uvinul A+, one of the most widely used UVA filters, but the company actually aims to develop a new filter family based on a selection of the least controversial filters on the market.
“We have three filters whose chemical structures are fully validated, so we can offer up to an SPF30, but we have been working on a fourth filter to obtain a bio-adhesive SPF50,” explains the CEO.
The project, still in its pilot phase, must now get through the complex step of regulations. The first file will be submitted for approval to the European Commission next June.
“Placing UV filters on the market involves a very long and complex regulatory process. That is the reason why this segment is rather poor in terms of innovation. Today’s challenge is a regulatory one,” adds Canolle.
Next step consists in preparing for market launch in Europe: the company is considering taking care of it by itself or in partnership with major cosmetics players.
“The added value of biotech companies mainly lies in innovation and R&D, so we prefer to leave the industrial part to expert players,” concludes the CEO of Skinosive.