Nuritas founder develops method to create skin care peptides

Biotech firm Nuritas’ founder, Dr Nora Khaldi, has come up with a methodology utilizing computational biology to create peptides to be used in skin care.

Computational biology, or bioinformatics, is the science of using biological data to develop algorithms and relations among various biological systems.

With bioinformatic technology, Khaldi found that millions of peptides derived from food can be efficiently narrowed-down to a handful of peptides that will show important health and well-being benefits.

Skin care trend

Peptides are a growing trend in anti-aging skin care, although most are synthetic peptides, and Nuritas claims its new solution will help to cut costs and time.

In skin care products, peptides can stimulate the natural production of collagen and elastin, both of which plump the skin and give it elasticity.

Peptides can also have various therapeutic qualities, including the management of chronic metabolic syndromes. Specifically, peptides can help prevent, manage or reduce cholesterol, blood sugar fluctuations for diabetics, inflammation, infection and oxidation.

Old vs New

The traditional way of finding these molecules is based on experimental searches, which can be a costly and drawn-out process.

Khaldi’s discovery claims to cut development costs to as little as 2.7% of current cost and reduces time to under 2 years, compared to the 5-7 years using the traditional method.

Consequently, cosmetics, food, and supplement companies will now be able to quickly diversify, enter the functional food/cosmetics areas, and attract new customers.

Nuritas also says that companies currently using synthetic peptides will have the opportunity to convert to naturally-derived peptides. The synthetics could cost-effectively be replaced with a larger concentration of the naturally-derived peptides, thereby increasing product efficacy.