A Massachusetts company kept its laboratory research secret for four years, but has now unveiled it to the public. It can keep human skin that would otherwise be discarded after plastic surgery alive and measurable for an entire month. It then uses the data obtained to train an artificial intelligence model to search for new skincare ingredients. The start-up is called Outer Biosciences and is led by Michael Polansky, who is currently the partner of singer Lady Gaga, who also sits on the company’s board.
Skin that survives outside the body for a month
Human skin removed from the body dies within a few days in the laboratory, which is only enough time to test acute toxicity. However, the processes that determine the actual effectiveness of skincare ingredients take place over several weeks. These include collagen remodeling, changes in pigmentation, restoration of the protective barrier, chronic inflammation, and cellular aging. According to Polansky, the entire field has so far been trying to study living tissue using cells that were actually already dying.
Outer Biosciences has developed a device that solves this problem. The Yuna platform can keep full-thickness skin alive for four weeks. The system preserves the epidermis, dermis, several types of commonly occurring cells, and functioning immune signaling. The device continuously supplies the tissue with nutrients and removes metabolic waste products.
Polansky speaks cautiously about the results. According to him, while tissue after thirty days looks very similar to how it did on the first day, it is not entirely identical. He illustrates the significance of this extended period with the example of sunburn. Researchers expose the skin to UVB radiation, damage it, and then monitor its response in the form of stress, inflammation, and healing for several weeks. They do not try to cure it; they merely monitor the processes taking place.
Where this skin comes from
The tissue material comes from surgical procedures, primarily in the field of cosmetic surgery. The company obtains it through vetted nonprofit and commercial biobanks that have documented donor consent. Its main suppliers are the American organizations National Disease Research Interchange and Cooperative Human Tissue Network, both funded by federal resources from the NIH and the National Cancer Institute.
Building this part of the operation took approximately two years. The samples must reach the laboratory within a few hours of surgery, while they are still alive. Names, contact details, and other information that could identify donors are removed by the suppliers before the tissue is shipped. According to Polansky, the company pays only handling costs for the samples, not a purchase price.
The model proposes something, and the skin decides
The purpose of the living tissue is to train the machine. The artificial intelligence model first predicts which previously untested chemical substance might affect a particular skin function. The living tissue then tests this prediction, and the result is fed back into the model regardless of whether the prediction was confirmed.
The difference became apparent once this loop was closed. When the company worked only with scientific literature, it found two viable candidates in roughly a year and a half. Now, according to Polansky, the model produces a new candidate approximately every six weeks. The company currently has six active ingredients and has already identified several dozen more. It expects four of them to successfully reach the market.
The company published a study in which it used its platform to test three treatments with known effects from clinical practice. Continuous stimulation with the signaling molecules IL-17 and IL-22 induced a psoriasis-like condition in human skin within three weeks, a process that cannot be simulated within the usual three-day to one-week window. Tofacitinib, a JAK inhibitor used in patients, reversed this condition at every measured time point. Dasatinib with quercetin reduced signs of aging and inflammation in tissue obtained from older donors. Sunscreen reduced UVB radiation damage at the histological and biochemical levels, as well as in terms of gene activity.
The goal is cosmetics, not drugs
The chosen business model avoids the medical field. Outer Biosciences is searching for cosmetic ingredients rather than drugs, so it does not have to undergo the approval process of the U.S. FDA. It only needs a standard technical name for the substance and safety tests that member countries mutually recognize. The company does not want to sell its own cosmetics. It plans to license or sell the ingredients it develops to cosmetics and pharmaceutical manufacturers, which will use them to create finished serums and creams.
Europe created the demand
The context for the development of these technologies was largely shaped by the European Union. It banned animal testing for cosmetics more than ten years ago, making validated alternative methods mandatory rather than merely an ethical preference. On June 1, the European Commission also adopted a plan to phase out animal testing in chemical safety assessments.
Competitors are also trying to meet this demand. This August, Philadelphia-based Vivodyne, which grows human tissues in the laboratory, announced that it had raised nearly $80 million in total. Alongside it, numerous companies with organ-on-a-chip systems are competing for the same preclinical testing market.
According to Polansky, there is no public database of biological data that could simply be downloaded, so no one else has the information from his laboratory. The models therefore run on the company’s own servers because management does not want to store this sensitive data in the cloud.
Sources: techcrunch.com and thenextweb.com
