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Ahead of this year’s Biofabricate summit, we’re profiling some of the people, products and companies at the forefront of the Material Revolution. This week, we reached out to Geltor to learn more about their pioneering work on novel new proteins for health, beauty and beyond.

So what exactly does Geltor do?

We’re a bio-design company that makes the world’s most advanced proteins for consumers, with a focus on unique functionality and sustainability.

Can you give us an example of one product/process?

Our first commercial product, N-Collage™ – which Biofabricate attendees can see in the Design Lab – was developed this year. It’s the world’s first completely animal-free collagen engineered for unparalleled skincare performance, and clinical testing has shown that it outperforms other collagens in areas like cellular regeneration, protection and derma-collagen synthesis. It is sold as a 1% protein solution, and made using a sustainable fermentation process that converts renewable plant-based inputs into a pure, high-performance protein product.

What are some of the main advantages of your approach?

We’ve seen the global demand for collagen in beauty and personal care products, supplements, and food surge in recent years. But current methods of sourcing collagen – from the waste products of cows, pigs, and fish – are not only unsustainable, they’re actually failing to meet the outsized consumer demand. Essentially, it’s a much higher quality collagen product, but produced sustainably and ethically.

You state that the the 21st Century will be one of biology, not chemistry. Can you expand on this a bit?

Craig Venter and Daniel Cohen, pioneers behind the mapping of the human genome, envisioned that genomics (the study of the complete genetic blueprint of a species) would define the scientific advances of the 21st century. The fact that we’re now able to map out the exact content and structure of each and every gene in a species opens up limitless possibilities for its applications to medicine, synthetic biology, and a new era of engineered, high-performance consumer products. Similar to the incredible advancements in chemistry and physics which gave rise to things like antibiotics and personal computing in the 20th century, we believe that the 21st century will see advances in biology being applied to consumer products in really beneficial ways, at an even faster rate.

N-Collage™ seems to hold the promise of replacing marine collagen – can you tell us a bit more? As an oceans organization, this is very exciting.

Definitely! Not all consumers are aware that the collagen they put on their skin and ingest comes from the waste byproducts (bone and skin) of factory farmed livestock, or in the case of marine collagen, from fish scales. Ours is the only collagen on the market that is made with zero animal inputs, so it’s free of the associated concerns around greenhouse gas emissions, antibiotic resistance, and resource-intensive production.

We’re really excited about creating a future where high-performance proteins that could once only be harvested from animals can be produced by more sustainable and ethical means, while outperforming their animal-derived counterparts in terms of functionality and benefits.

A nudibranch. Image by Sam Soffes. All other images courtesy of Geltor.

Finally, what’s your personal favorite ocean creature?

We have a lot of favorites around the office! Octopi, squid, and sea cucumbers all produce some really interesting collagens. We have a marine biologist on the team who loves nudibranchs, which are a type of sea slug. Look up pink, rose, purple, and blue dragon nudibranchs and you’ll see why.