Debut raises $34 million for biotech beauty molecules

Abstract

The synthetic biology firm Debut Biotechnology has raised $34 million in series B funding to develop active ingredients for the beauty market. The funding round was led by the venture capital arm of the cosmetics giant L’Oréal. The Japanese firm DIC, which signed a joint development agreement with Debut earlier this year , also participated. Debut spun out of the lab of chemist Gregory Weiss at the University of California, Irvine, in 2019 and raised $23 million in series A funding in 2021. Cofounder and CEO Joshua Britton says that “the goal of the company is to turn the active ingredients space in beauty on its head” by combining biofermentation and cell-free enzymatic cascades to produce, at scale, molecules that nature makes only in minute quantities. He says Debut is working with DIC on bioactive polyphenols and has a “rich, diverse, and complex pipeline” with L’Oréal. “Beauty is probably one