Mitra Bio founder: Regenerative solutions set to dominate anti-aging skin care

Mitra Bio has created a noninvasive skin diagnostics platform to facilitate the development of age-rejuvenating compounds. The company’s platform uses noninvasive skin sampling powered by sequencing and data science to guide the design of therapeutic solutions in the personal care industry.

The platform measures the epigenetic profile of the skin. Epigenetics is the study of how lifestyle and environment can trigger changes in gene function. Epigenetic skin care is emerging in the personal care industry, with formulas designed to target cellular health. These products aim to change the way that genes are expressed so that the skin can look and act younger. 

Mita Bio’s proprietary aging clock, MitraClock, quantifies skin biological aging, drawing on clinical indicators like wrinkles and pigmentation and lifestyle factors such as sun exposure, smoking, and diet.

Personal Care Insights speaks to Shakiba Kaveh, the founder and CEO of Mitra Bio, about how it helps cosmetic companies measure skin biological age to discover age-reversal interventions.

How has the anti-aging trend shifted recently?
Kaveh: There’s been a noticeable shift from traditional anti-aging toward regenerative skin solutions. While we cannot stop aging entirely, we can develop innovative treatments that regenerate aged skin by promoting cell turnover, autophagy, removing senescent cells, and epigenetic reprogramming. 

I strongly believe evidence-based regenerative interventions will take center stage in the coming decade. 

Why is it important for beauty companies to test their beauty products and have them scientifically backed? 
Kaveh: Consumers seek evidence-based solutions. We have seen that customer loyalty is closely linked to evidence of efficacy. Any beauty company can augment its brand by communicating in scientific terms and having data to back up claims. Mitra Bio tells us that regenerative solutions will continue to develop in the personal care industry.

How can beauty companies leverage your testing? 
Kaveh: Skin care and aesthetic companies use the MitraBio platform in their human clinical trials to obtain insight into how their treatments affect skin aging and rejuvenation in-vivo. This provides real-life feedback, as opposed to ex-vivo or in-vitro models, which do not represent the dynamics of the human skin and the exposome. Our method enables product claims to be validated scientifically.

Why is it important that your testing is noninvasive?
Kaveh: Molecular biomarkers are critical in clinical trials. They provide objective data on treatment efficacy, individual responses, and skin condition severity. Currently, these biomarkers are extracted using invasive skin biopsies, which face lengthy ethics approval processes, incur costs exceeding £2,000 (US$2,587.61) per biopsy, and prevent large-scale, population-wide sampling necessary for extensive data collection.

Tape-stripping offers a noninvasive alternative. While tape-stripping is not new and has been used in dermatological applications, the ability to extract substantial amounts of DNA non-invasively from tape strips, followed by DNA methylation sequencing and biomarker extraction, is innovative. Mitra Bio is the first company globally to successfully develop skin epigenetic assays using its patented and proprietary platform.

This method is not only cheaper, faster, and scalable but also enables large-scale data acquisition akin to epigenetic-wide studies, facilitating profound insights and discoveries in skin health and treatment responses.

Why should beauty companies choose to partner with you over competitors? 
Kaveh: Mitra Bio is the only company that has developed a proprietary DNA methylation assay for age analysis directly from the skin. We have developed an epigenetic clock, MitraClock, which measures various markers linked with inflammation, the pace of aging, and photodamage. These patented epigenetic markers are being validated with clinical measurements such as imaging and proteomics-based markers for inflammation.