Modern Meadow’s Bio-Coll@gen offers a solution to a long-standing cosmetic and skincare challenge: finding a safe, sustainable and scalable replacement for animal-derived collagen.
Modern Meadow — embedded in a biotech campus in
Nutley, New Jersey — recently invited Sustainable Brands® to tour
its Beauty Lab to spotlight its flagship ingredient for the beauty &
wellness industry: Modern Meadow
Bio-Coll@gen™.
It’s here that the bio-design technology company is working to reinvent how
society produces sustainable alternatives to a host of common
ingredients
for the materials, personal care and biomedical industries.
Modern Meadow Beauty Lab has developed a solution to a long-standing cosmetic
and skin care challenge: finding a safe, sustainable and scalable replacement
for animal-derived collagen. While animal collagen has historically been
abundant and cost-effective, it has drawbacks — including the risk of infectious
disease, viral vector transmission and allergenicity.
There are 28 known collagen types. Modern Meadow Bio-Coll@gen replicates Human
Type III Collagen — also known as the “youth collagen” for its vital role in
keeping human skin, organs and other tissues healthy, stable and elastic —
making it a staple ingredient in many beauty, personal care and pharmaceutical
products.
Existing alternatives have been unable to match the efficacy of animal collagen,
until now. Modern Meadow’s Bio-Coll@gen is precisely fermented as Human Type III
Collagen, which youthful bodies use to maintain healthy skin. Because it is
sustainably sourced from non-animal origins, Bio-Coll@gen is both
environmentally friendly and bio-active. It promotes the skin’s natural ability
to produce its own Collagen III, providing powerful anti-aging factors.
“Collagen only occurs naturally in animals — historically, it has been extracted
from fish, pigs, and cattle,” said Jason
O’Neill, SVP & General Manager of
Modern Meadow Beauty & Wellness. “In addition to being a multi-step and
resource-intensive extraction process, it comes with some of animal
agriculture’s most environmentally damaging side effects — particularly,
deforestation
— and it remains one of the few animal-sourced ingredients in cosmetic and skin
care products.”
To replicate Collagen III in a lab, Modern Meadow engineered yeast strains
through precision fermentation — a more ‘precise’ version of the time-tested
process used to create beer, cheese, bread, pickles and other foods throughout
history.
By growing these proteins from yeast, Modern Meadow bypasses the impacts of
conventional, animal-based extraction methods — providing the cosmetics
industry with a more ethically sourced and sustainable building block for
personal-care products that is molecularly identical to the naturally occurring
version. The bioactive is available in either a liquid solution or in dry-packed
form for inclusion by brand partners in a wide range of beauty and wellness
products.
"Replicating Human Type III Collagen was a deliberate choice for Modern Meadow,
driven by its intricate and synergistic contribution to overall human health and
wellness," expressed Chief Science and Technology Officer David
Williamson said during
the tour. "This distinctive advantage sets us apart; and it’s why our partners
choose to work with us.”
Cultivating a niche
Like many science and technology companies, Modern Meadow underwent extensive
exploration to find its optimal business model. According to Williamson, the
deep-science company deliberated extensively on whether to develop and market
its beauty and wellness products or establish itself as a sustainable-ingredient
technology platform, partnering with brands and distributors to incorporate
sustainable elements into its offerings.
Ultimately, the B2B model emerged as the prevailing choice. Today, Modern Meadow
has emerged as a purpose-driven biotechnology leader with technology-application
platforms powered by proteins. These innovations facilitate scientific
advancements and provide sustainable solutions to partners keen on mitigating
risks associated with materials and ingredients contributing to climate change,
biodiversity loss and other environmental challenges.
By adopting this approach, Modern Meadow has leveraged its decision to implement
the drop-in technology partnership model for the Bio-Coll@gen platform —
offering sustainable solutions that prioritize both performance and scalability.
This strategy predominantly focuses on short-chain, peptide-centered collagen
solutions — allowing for swift production by co-manufacturers without
significant capital investments, while ensuring complete supply chain
traceability.
Williamson firmly believes that Bio-Coll@gen and its unwavering commitment to
scientific advancement give Modern Meadow a competitive advantage in this space.
Through collaboration with prominent beauty and wellness brands, the company is
dedicated to expediting progress and addressing the prevailing challenges in the
rapidly growing field of anti-aging, all while prioritizing sustainability.
This strategic direction has proven fruitful, as Modern Meadow recently launched
a partnership with Evonik
— one of the world's largest specialty biochemistry companies — centered around
Bio-Coll@gen. Evonik highlighted Modern Meadow's strong sustainability
credentials as pivotal in its decision to forge the partnership.
Tracking impact
Modern Meadow recently released its first impact
report, demonstrating its
commitment to transparency through lifecycle assessments (LCA) — the gold
standard for measuring the environmental impacts of products. More specifically,
the company is using “hotspot analysis” to inform product design decisions and
conducting full LCAs for finished products to precisely measure the
environmental impacts of each unit of product — which includes the extraction of
raw materials, energy inputs, transport, environmental impacts associated with
production processes, and more.
It’s worth noting that companies of this size (Modern Meadow has just over 100
employees) typically don’t publish comprehensive impact reports or do complete
LCAs — in fact, nearly 50 percent of the world’s largest companies don’t publish
impact or sustainability reports at all; and the vast majority still do not do
LCAs for their products (however, new regulations in
Europe
and the
US
may soon change that) — so, its proactive approach is commendable.
While Modern Meadow continues to collect comprehensive LCA data for
Bio-Coll@gen, the company has already made significant strides in sustainability
measurement by publishing a full LCA in the Journal of Cleaner and Circular Bioeconomy
for its Bioleather prototype material family — produced through its
Bio-Alloy™ platform; the study
revealed a reduction of over 90 percent in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions
compared to traditional, chrome-tanned leather.
While Williamson acknowledged that Modern Meadow is still in the early stages of
impact assessment, he emphasized that the company is determined to continue
showcasing its positive impact on the environment and supply chains through
rigorous measurement and transparency.
Published May 22, 2023 8am EDT / 5am PDT / 1pm BST / 2pm CEST
Jeremy Osborn is a NYC-based entrepreneur and and senior consultant with a background in marketing and communications, tech, strategy, governance, and sustainability. He holds an MA in Resources, Environment, and Sustainability from the University of British Columbia and has worked for leading brands in a wide range of industries and sectors — including food and ag, consumer goods, built environment, industrial manufacturing, energy, finance, transportation, and more.
Sponsored Content
/ This article is sponsored by
Modern Meadow Inc.
This article, produced in cooperation with the Sustainable Brands editorial team, has been paid for by one of our sponsors.