Bioactive bond builder: US biotech firm believes it can bring effective anti-humidity hair solutions to SEA

The firm was attending ingredients trade show in-cosmetics Global 2024 for the first time in April to unveil its flagship cosmetic launch, Curamina.

“What we have is a bioactive bond builder that makes new peptide bonds with collagen and keratin. What we can do is seal in protein in hair,”​ said Erika Milczek, founder and chief executive of Curie Co.

Speaking to CosmeticsDesign-Asia​, Milczek said the ingredient has potential in markets all across the world but told us she was particularly interested in breaking into the humid SEA region.

“SEA has some pretty aggressive humidity and I think it would be a great place for our product. Particularly, we are looking at Singapore because it’s such a melting pot of cultures and that means lots of different hair types. We are looking for brands in Singapore and we would love to support them on a technical side and give them something unique and innovative to bring to market.”​

Milczek explained that the ingredient was multifunctional, with three main benefits for hair.

“The first is humidity resistance or frizz control. The second is style retention, we have really beautiful style retention that can withstand both humidity and wear over the day. And then the third is great colour retention so you can retain vivid colour over multiple washes. Another benefit that we've seen is actually a reduction in drying time.”​

According to the firm the product is 99% biobased and 100% biodegradable.

The product has been tested on human hair swatches in a high-humidity chamber and has gleaned results that surpass the performance of petrochemical-based ingredients.

Opportunities in skin care

With the launch of Curamina, the firm is focused on hair care applications. However, it is also looking to push the product into the skin care market, where it believes it also has multifunctional potential.

“Basically, we took a bioactive and we engineered it to mimic the function of enzymes that are already present in skin and hair that are involved in skin and hair building. Therefore, we already know that this will work with skin care,”​ said Milzcek.

However, she added that the firm does not have enough expertise in skin care and is looking to collaborate with the right partners in that space.

“We really see a lot of beautiful synergies with the chemical industry. We would like to partner with the best so that we can really rely on partners' expertise to collaborate and launch innovative products and get into new markets.”​