I love these interviews because honestly, at the end of the day, it's all about the science,

you know, you've got to follow the science when it comes to true skin health. And I think all of us have pretty much learned that at this point, you know, in our own journeys as consumers. And so without further ado, I want to introduce you guys to the CEO and co-founder of one skin, Carolina Reyes Oliveira. Welcome to show Carolina. Thank you so much coming on to the show.

Thank you, actor. Such a great pleasure to be here today.

It's my honor to host you. And I really, really love the brand. And I've been using it now. And for striver and listening, I've been using it now for a few months. And I've really loved it. And, you know, I'm just a believer in good science and good formulation. And I think that you guys, you know, Carolina, you guys are really nailing it, you know, in the space. And so I can't wait to learn about all the nitty gritty details. But I would look for you to start us off with, you know, where ones can really begin. And, you know, just even your personal journey with, you know, when you decide

to start the line and what really inspired it. So if you could walk us down memory lane, I love that. Yeah, for sure. I'll try to summarize. It's kind of a long story. But I'm a scientist by training. I'm originally from Brazil.

And I got a PhD in STEM cell biology and teaching engineering mainly because I was always really passionate about the power that science has to really, you know, transform people's lives.

And I was primarily interested in helping people to, to live better to you have a better quality of life. So as a scientist in the beginning, you think that you can do that by finding a cure for a disease.

And then you think, okay, I've done my contribution. But as we started like really learning about the root of the diseases that we experience as we grow older. And we realized that all of them are associated with one very common process. That's the aging factor. Right. So

as we grow older and as we, you know, we cross our like 60, 65 years old, our chances of developing all different types of like chronic diseases and degenerative diseases really increases exponentially.

So it was a moment of realization that instead of like trying to cure disease, if we can actually fight aging and help people to live like healthier for longer, this would be a much more impactful way that I could, you know, bring my contribution to the world.

And this was very interesting because I didn't get to this realization right away. So I was finishing my PhD and I want to start a company. I want to really bring that science that I was developing in order to create a product. Something that would, again, impact people's lives.

And at the beginning, we were initially growing human tissues in the lab to replace animal testing. So we saw the need obviously from the cosmetic industry. But even from the pharmaceutical industry, if you can test in human tissues, you have a much more accurate model to really understand how a certain, you know, medication, we work in a certain cosmetic product as well. Instead of obviously testing animals.

Unfortunately, that first approach didn't work out. It was like we were back in Brazil. The ecosystem was not ready to absorb this kind of technology, but really allowed us to have an opportunity to come to the US and join this accelerator here at in the bio.

So I think the bio we decided to focus on we know we knew how to grow human tissues, right? And one of the tissues that we could replicate in the lab was human skins. So we thought, okay, we can grow human skin.

What do we can use those skins for? So initially, we were testing the safety of products because a lot of products that, you know, they they can cause more harm than good. And fortunately, it's hard for the consumers. No, but when we apply some products in our skins that we grow in the lab, we see, oh my goodness, this product is not causing benefits. It's actually damaging your skin.

But we saw that companies were not interested in learning that their products were not good. So, okay, how we can offer something that could be more interesting as, you know, in terms of a market market market market opportunity.

And then we saw that obviously the anti aging market is a massive market like everyone is cares about to know to look younger and there is a ton of product out there, but the consumers are still lost in terms like which products work, which don't.

So how we could help a rate basically to distinguish those products. And because we are able to grow the tissues in the lab, if we could measure the age of the tissue that we were growing, we could then test a given product or even like a given ingredient and measure again, if that product was was changing the age of the skin, basically the biological age of the skin.

And then at that point, we start like testing a few products and and very fast what we realized is that most products out there, they were not like developed with this intention or with the rationale of targeting aging itself. So most of the anti aging products, for example, assets or retinols, they are targeting the surface of the skin so can they can make your skin to look better in the short.

term, but they are still missing the mark in terms of addressing aging at the source. So very fast, we realize, OK, we as a scientist, we understand what's driving aging and I believe there is a better way to actually address this problem and deliver a more effective age reversal effect aging reversal product for the skin.

So that's when we decided basically to shift our approach from testing products to actually developing a novel product with a completely different approach that would address one of the main mechanisms that's associated with the aging process, not only the skin, but in our whole body and we can discuss more about that.

But that's also when we realized that you know targeting aging, it could be a way that we could help our skin to look better, but we could eventually help other tissues and our whole organism, our whole body to be, you know, more functional, healthier for longer because in the end, it's all about like preventing the accumulation of damage that happens over time.

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