Biotech Trailblazers IntegriCulture Launch First Cell-Cultured Skincare Ingredient

• Japanese biotechnology startup announces CELLAMENT®️, a cell-cultured ingredient for skin repair developed using revolutionary cellular agriculture technology
• This new product unleashes the previously untapped nutritional power of eggs by selectively cultivating egg cells instead of harvesting whole, chicken-laid eggs
• CELLAMENT is among the first cellular agriculture products ready for large-scale commercialization

TOKYO, JAPAN – IntegriCulture Inc., the Japanese biotechnology startup pioneering revolutionary advancements in cellular agriculture, today announced the launch of CELLAMENT, the first in a new generation of bioactive skincare ingredients based on cutting-edge cell-culture technology. 

CELLAMENT harnesses the unique nutritional power of eggs but surpasses them in both growth factors and proteins. The result is a cell-cultured serum rich in antioxidants that aid in skin recovery, offering a radical new solution for skin repair while marking a significant step forward for the cellular agriculture industry.

“Cell-culture technology doesn’t just change how we source traditionally animal-derived ingredients, it also enables us to unlock nutritional and functional power that was previously inaccessible,” explains IntegriCulture Founder and CEO, Yuki Hanyu. “There’s never been a product like CELLAMENT before, and certainly not one ready for scalable commercialization. This is a significant milestone for cellular agriculture and for the skincare industry.”

IntegriCulture spent years researching cell-cultured serum applications in cosmetics. As the body’s largest organ, skin requires proper nutrients for optimal health, and few sources offer as complete a nutritional profile as eggs. By selectively cultivating three types of egg cells — the amnion, yolk sac, and plasma membrane — IntegriCulture can amplify the potency of key nutritional elements far beyond levels found in chicken-laid eggs, and with significantly greater resource efficiency than conventional chicken farming. These three substances are then combined to create the serum comprising the base of Cellament, which can be used in a wide variety of cosmetics formulations.

CELLAMENT has been shown to:

• Inhibit between 10-70% of enzymatic activity that degrades skin elasticity
• Accelerate the production of fibroblast growth factor (FGF), a protein that facilitates faster skin cell turnover, increasing skin smoothness while also preventing wrinkle formation
• Increase the production of enzymes and proteins associated with keratinocyte moisture retention — 90% of the skin’s outermost layer is made up of such keratinocytes — while also decreasing the production of enzymes that lead to skin dryness 
• Target free-radical processes that accelerate disease and aging by reducing OH radicals and lipid peroxidation, thereby reducing the unwanted blemishes, pigmentation, and wrinkles associated with aging
• Inhibit the production of inflammatory cytokines responsible for skin redness by mitigating UV damage
• Reduce sebaceous pore size and sebum secretion, which mitigated acne and blackheads in an 8-week trial

The CELLAMENT breakthrough was made possible by IntegriCulture’s unique CulNet™ system technology. Standard cell-culture systems have faced serious scalability bottlenecks due to the high costs of special nutrients called growth factors, which typically need to be purchased and fed to target cells in inefficient batch processes. In contrast, IntegriCulture’s CulNet system replicates the physiology and biochemistry of the body’s internal organs to produce its own growth factors. “CulNet continuously produces, recycles, and optimizes growth factors to meet the needs of the cells they feed. This solves one of the industry’s greatest challenges toward achieving scalability and cost reduction for cell-cultured products,” said IntegriCulture CTO, Dr. Ikko Kawashima.

To learn more about Cellament, visit www.cellament.jp/cellament-en.

About IntegriCulture

Established in 2015, IntegriCulture is a Tokyo-based biotechnology startup advancing cell-culture technologies. The company’s CulNet system allows for the large-scale production of cell-based biomaterials, cosmetics, pharmaceuticals, supplements, and food products for the first time in history. In 2020, IntegriCulture was awarded $2.2 million by Japan’s New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization to establish a commercial production facility. IntegriCulture founder Yuki Hanyu was also instrumental in establishing the Shojinmeat Project, a DIY citizen-science community dedicated to open-sourcing cell-based meat research. To learn more about IntegriCulture and the CulNet system, visit integriculture.com.