Interview mit Silvia Pastor, Head of Scientific Research and Business Development at LipoTrue (2)

Silvia Pastor, Head of Scientific Research and Business Development
LipoTrue

Silvia, Congratulations on Lipotrue’s 5th Anniversary! Can you tell us a bit more about your early days as a company to now being internationally recognized?

I remember we started with very few people but a lot of energy. We started from scratch and everything needed to be moved. We were 4 people in the Lab, one person in communication and one Product Manager. We needed to evaluate new molecules, search for applications, look for CROs that would perform the first efficacy tests and develop final formulas for clinical testing. Everything was prepared by us. Then we also needed to create a name for the company, an image, etc. A lot of work. Now we look at final products in the global market containing our active ingredient and it Is really satisfying. 

What have been the most successful innovations/launches during n this period and what were some of the challenges?

One of our jewels is Sirtalice™; one of our first biotechnological ferments developed in quite a short time and with a lot of success in the market. It contains proteins and sugars of different molecular weight produced by a microorganism from deep cold waters in the Indian Ocean. Based on its origin we went directly to prove its effects on energy and cell-matrix interactions and we were able to claim an increase in cellular ATP and an instant lifting effect on volunteers right after 30min of application. Another jewel is Munapsys™, this was a more challenging development as we wanted to bring to the market a second generation botox-like peptide, an innovation that the market was demanding. It is a highly technological ingredient developed using in silico tools normally used in the pharma industry. With some more time for development, we finally designed a patented peptide able to act dually on both muscle and neurons involved in expression wrinkles and has shown to be more potent that the mix of two current benchmarks with individual approaches. 

You recently published a paper ‘A new peptide mimicking a good sleep-in time of pandemia’. What exactly is the new peptide and how does it mimick sleep?

Its commercial name is iPeptide™ and it’s our sixth peptide in our portfolio. The main activity of this peptide was discovered using Big Data analytics of the full genome of fibroblasts treated with the ingredient. Interestingly, we found that the gene encoding the cytokine IL33 was downregulated by the peptide. Searching the literature about IL33 we found that’s this molecule is increased during inflammatory processes in the skin associated to a chronic lack of sleep affecting our dermal integrity and increasing water retention and hyperpigmentation. Those were characteristics that could affect our eye contour and we found a clear benefit with this peptide for those individuals which have problems with sleep and specially during this time. Complementary to this and knowing the benefits of melatonin as an antioxidant and chrono-modulator, we wanted to compare our peptide to melatonin for these benefits and interestingly we can now claim that iPeptide™ has melantonin-like activity. We expect that with all these benefits from iPeptide™, consumers will benefit from its application taking care of this delicate and highly representative feature of our mood and well-being.

Speaking of pandemic, how has Lipotrue adapted to the new normal of virtual only? 

Our Team is quite young and reactive and adaptation has been quite fast. Luckily all Cosmetic Organizations have also reacted quickly and have created new virtual tradeshows for new ingredients promotion. On our side, LipoTrue has created its own channel of communication through Livestorm to organize seminars and new product launches. Regarding new developments, we continue our commitment to keep developing novel ingredients even under these adverse circumstances and we have launched 4 new ingredients during 2020 and plan over 5 new launches for 2021; including a new technology.