Eternal youth is still a long way off, even for modern science. Yet research continues to find ways to slow the signs of ageing.

Responding to consumer demand for gentler skincare, many biobased anti-ageing products today centre around microbes.

Biotech companies are using microbes to make wrinkle-combatting, elasticity-boosting compounds more sustainably.

The anti-ageing effects of microbes are more than skin deep, too. Cutting-edge research now suggests microbial chemicals could even slow the process of ageing itself.

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Here is why microbial anti-ageing could become a budding beauty trend.

From Botox to biologicals

Mar-a-Lago face, TikTok face, and “undetectable facelifts”. The new vocabulary around beauty reflects a striking fact: the last five years have seen surging demand for plastic surgery.

Consumers are now embracing the knife just like they would an eyebrow brush. Public figures have driven the trend, including social media influencers, Hollywood celebs, and prominent politicians on the US right.

Whatever you make of it, plastic surgery is set to remain a key fixture of the beauty industry.

Yet we are also starting to see an opposite trend. As consumers recoil against more extreme surgical aesthetics, many are now yearning for gentler, preventative forms of beauty.

This “facelift-fatigue” has boosted interest in biological treatments that deliver radiance without knives or needles.

Granted, many biological skincare products are still used alongside – not instead of – injectables and surgical intervention. Yet the tide towards subtler beauty is real.

The desire for gentler beauty complements a longer-term trend toward organic ingredients in cosmetics.

Increasingly, consumers want to replace the petrochemicals and heavy metals that contaminate conventional beauty products with biobased ingredients that are lighter on the environment.

With beauty consumers turning towards subtler beauty and natural ingredients, ingredients makers are expanding their range of biobased ingredients. To achieve this at cost, many are turning to microbes – a new source of gentler beauty.

Industry expands biological offerings

Microbes are useful to the beauty industry because of their natural chemical capabilities.

Thanks to their metabolisms, these creatures can produce many complex chemicals more efficiently than man-made machines and synthetic chemical processes alone, particularly when their genetics are carefully fine-tuned to do so.

Provital is one of the companies taking advantage of these natural traits. Its PureBlome anti-ageing ingredient contains a microbial ferment from Bacillus velezensis, a bacterial species found on the hyssop flower. A ferment is just a chemical byproduct that results from a microbe digesting its food.

Aside from the Bacillus ferment, Provital’s formulation contains Water, Propanediol, Glycerin, Pentylene Glycol, Levulinic Acid, and Glyceryl Caprylate.

Skincare manufacturers can use the product to give their consumer-facing formulations an anti-ageing boost. According to the company, clinical tests show PureBlome can create a 14% increase in collage, a 25% increase in elastin, and a 37% reduction in by-products related to advanced glycation end-products (cell-damageing chemicals).

The power of ferments

The UK’s Uniproma is another biotech company focused on bringing microbe-produced anti-ageing to the market.

The company has a long list of microbe-fermented oils, including those based on meadowfoam seed, grape seed, rosehip and the prinseopia. All harbour anti-ageing properties.

Microbes offer beauty ingredient manufacturers a gentler way of enhancing the beauty benefits inside plants. As they digest the organic matter, the microbes shrink the molecular mass of active chemicals, making it easier for the skin to absorb them. Microbial digestion can also increase the amount of active ingredients found inside plant material.

The company also uses microbes to further break down their fermented oils, creating even more refined products. For example, Uniproma uses a microbe to break down its meadowfoam seed oil into the Sunori M-MSF – an anti-oxidant-rich ingredient the company sells as a non-greasy moisturiser oil.

According to Uniproma, fermented beauty has many benefits aside from the ability to concoct specialty chemicals at cost. Unlike other chemical industry processes, microbial fermentation does not involve high heat. This helps preserve sensitive natural compounds. This low-temperature approach is also more eco-friendly because it uses less energy.

Living skin-yoghurts

Microbes could even have more direct benefits for skin, as living anti-ageing agents.

The skin microbiome is a dynamic ecosystem of microorganisms that lives on the skin and supports its functions.

A well-balanced community of skin microbes can make the difference between dull, aged skin and a radiant complexion.

Species work together to defend against pathogens, boost immunity, and enhance the skin barrier against pollutants or harsh skincare products.

Aging can disrupt the delicate balance of skin microbes, which accelerates ageing and weakens the skin’s defences.

Topical skin products containing live cultures could revive a weakened microbiome. We could think of this as a microbiome-enhancing ‘skin-yoghurt’ that would deliver these living microorganisms directly onto the skin, helping maintain its functions.

While some companies sell prebiotic skincare – which feed microbes already present on the skin – there are technical problems to developing a microbiome cream that actually delivers live bacteria.

To have certain effects, a microbiome has to contain the right species into the right ratios.  If numbers of microbes wax and wane, it can damage efficacy. Finding a way to stabilise these living communities for long periods will be crucial to formulating a microbiome product that delivers actual bacteria.

Life-giving “vitamins”

The potential for microbes in anti-ageing goes beyond topical treatments, however. Biotech firms are now tapping into the market for nutricosmetics, which believes that beauty is what you eat.

Nutricosmetics sees nutritional health as the number one variable in anti-ageing. It aims to actively slow the ageing process through carefully formulated diets and supplements.

One area of nutricosmetic research centres on a group of compounds called ‘longevity vitamins’. Some scientists say these can help slow the ageing process but that they must be taken in through diet.

One type of longevity vitamin is ergothioneine, which fights against the reactive oxygen species associated with ageing, like wrinkles, frailty, and cognitive decline. They are most effective in older populations.

Microorganisms could be the key to commercialising ergothioneine. The chemical is found in certain mushrooms and a few organisms, but only in negligible amounts. Extracting from natural sources would not be commercially viable.

Recently, however, Japanese researchers at chemicals trading firm NAGASE reported on a new biobased method that could drastically bring down manufacturing costs. It uses engineered microorganisms to produce the chemical in the lab.

The microbes can make high volumes of ergothioneine in their bodies which can later be extracted. They are highly productive thanks to genetic modifications and optimising procedures that make their bioreactors an ideal place for them to grow.

When ergothioneine research started at NAGASE in 2014, a kilogram cost nearly US$1 million. The costs of making the chemical could go down by up to 99% thanks to the new biomanufacturing method.

Particles of youth

Microbes are also showing powerful anti-ageing effects in rodent trials.

In April, a group of scientists published in Nature on the anti-ageing effects of extracellular particles from the bacteria Limosilactobacillus fermentum.

The scientist measured an increase in skin thickness in mice given the particles. They also observed maintenance of healthy collagen fibres as well as a slow-down in cognitive decline.

Mice metabolisms are different from ours, so human trials will be needed to prove whether these particles could really benefit us.

However, the paper does show how microbial treatment may have the capacity to blur the line between cosmetics, biological enhancement, and pharmaceuticals.

What defines research into longevity vitamins and these extracellular particles is their emphasis on actually slowing the biological clock, not just slowing the signs of ageing.

At this point, biobased beauty ceases to be purely cosmetic. Rather than surface-level interventions, chemicals derived from microbes could offer powerful ways to intervene on fundamental biological mechanisms.

The new face of beauty

Microbes are the swiss army knife of biobased anti-ageing, playing multiple roles across the  natural beauty niche.

These creatures can intensify the beauty-enhancing properties of botanical ingredients by chemically altering them. What’s more, microbial ferments offer a greener way to manufacture products without harsh synthetics or solvents. Their ability to replicate rare wild botanicals indoors also means the beauty industry can avoid unsustainable harvesting.

We also find microbes in the most advanced frontiers of anti-ageing research. Microbiome treatments could become the future of topical skincare, while microbial biomanufacturing could bring down the costs of nutricosmetic supplements that promise to slow the ageing process itself.

Beauty in the early 2020s has been defined by the rise of plastic surgery. Yet when the pendulum swings back to more natural beautification, it’s certain that microbes will be at the centre of it all.