RXi is at work on skin lightening and rejuvenating products made with self-delivering RNAi while VDF FutureCeuticals is zooming in on the potential uses of Kona coffee fruit. These endeavors are a fair representation of the wide ranging potential biotech has in the industry.
Coffee break
Today VDF FutureCeuticals announced a deal with KonaRed Corporation to source exclusive Hawaiian CoffeeBerry: this marks “the first time anywhere, sustainable, traceable and high quality coffee fruit grown in the U.S.A will be made available on a large scale,” according to the media release.
It’s a good deal for the company and will likely lead to some interesting cosmetics innovations, not only because of the ingredient’s standalone potential but also because of VDF FC's position as abiotech discovery researcher.
“Under the terms of the new agreement, which has a five year term and renews automatically, KonaRed will serve as VDF FC's exclusive supply source for premium US-grown Kona coffee fruit. VDF FC, in turn, will manufacture and market a line of 100% U.S.-grown coffee fruit-based ingredients, including dried fruit (pulp) and whole cherry powders, juice concentrates, and extracts to the food, beverage, cosmetics, nutritional, and dietary supplement industries.”
Skin overhaul
In this week’s Q3 report, the biotech company RXi Pharmaceuticals Corporation made mention of its plans to continue work on skin lightening and rejuvenation products.
The company believes that the global market potential for personal care products in these categories is close to $200bn. Accordingly, RXi “has selected collagenase and tyrosinase as targets for our self-delivering RNAi platform,” explains the company’s Q3 media release.
The skin lightening project is described as an “RXI-231, an sd-rxRNA compound developed to target TYR, has been selected for development as a product that may act as a skin lightening agent. Treatment with RXI-231 resulted in a visible reduction of pigmentation in melanocytes in a 3-dimensional tissue culture model of human epidermis.”
And the rejuvenating project: “RXI-185, an sd-rxRNA compound developed to target MMP1, has been selected for development as a product that may improve skin appearance. Results from studies evaluating RXI-185 show a pronounced reduction in MMP1 mRNA levels that correspond to a similar reduction in MMP1 enzyme activity in cell culture in vitro.”