Inside The Estée Lauder Companies' Ingredient Innovation Race

The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (ELC) has boosted its high-performance and sustainable technologies via new research partnerships and by bringing some production in-house.
The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (ELC) has boosted its high-performance and sustainable technologies via new research partnerships and by bringing some production in-house.

The Estée Lauder Companies Inc. (ELC) is teaming up with a laboratory run by Robert Langer, ScD, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), to develop new beauty ingredient technologies, including biodegradable materials for cosmetic applications, and "new solutions to help combat the effects that visible sunlight and blue light have on the skin."

The move follows recent moves ELC has made to its ingredient technologies.

Earlier this month, the company entered into a partnership with Exuud Inc to pioneer a “smart fragrance expression hardware platform" that will be implemented into ELC’s fragrance portfolio by the end of 2025. Exuud has a patented fragrance delivery system known as Soliqaire, which uses plant-based, biodegradable polymer blends to absorb and release fragrance, as well as novel hardware platforms that control fragrance release.

And, late in 2024, ELC opened its BioTech Hub focused "exclusively on manufacturing cutting-edge bio-based raw materials," per the company. The site supports the company's broader pivot away from reliance on biomass and natural resources, while ensuring business continuity. Based near its campus in Oevel, Belgium, the site (led by Caroline Paulussen, Ph.D.) will manufacture active biomolecules from plant, yeast and bacteria sources to be applied in ELC skin care products across a range of brands.  

The latest MIT partnership follows "promising research" led by Ana Jaklenec, Ph.D., principal investigator at MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer Research, who worked with Langer.

In particular, the MIT work focused on the "development of biodegradable materials for cosmetic applications and [the exploration of] new solutions to combat the effects of visible light from the sun," per an official announcement. In particular, the sun protection innovation is focused on blocking visible light to protect against visible light-induced pigmentation and potential photodamage.

Future work will focus on both performance and sustainability, per ELC.

“Fostering strategic collaborations with world-leading scientific and academic institutions has long been a critical approach to driving innovation at The Estée Lauder Companies and enables us to remain at the forefront of research,” said Carl Haney, executive vice president, research, product and innovation officer, ELC. “We are proud to collaborate with exceptional scientists who are exploring new frontiers in sustainability and innovation. Dr. Jaklenec’s research is demonstrating it’s possible to develop a new class of materials that can offer various transformative applications.”

“As scientists, we deeply value the opportunity to translate our work from the lab to the real world,” said Jaklenec. “With this new collaboration, we look forward to exploring the potential ways our research can lead to sustainable and innovative materials that drive impactful advancements in skin health."

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