One of the most prominent cosmetic ingredients in recent years is recombinant collagen. From Shiseido to L’Oréal and P&G, the attention of top beauty companies both in China and internationally has turned to this representative Chinese ingredient.
It is worth mentioning that while China ranks at the forefront of research in recombinant collagen, the exploration of this ingredient is far from over in the industry. Continuous breakthroughs are still needed in areas such as technology, cost, and large-scale production.
Recently, Hangzhou Mayliu Biotech Co., Ltd. (referred to as Mayliu Biotech) has made significant progress in the field of collagen secretion expression technology, leading to a drastic reduction in the production cost of recombinant collagen. They have successfully achieved a selling price of only 10,000 yuan ($1396.07) per kilogram, breaking the price barrier for high-quality recombinant collagen. Furthermore, their “super-functional human-like collagen” is currently undergoing testing, heralding a new wave of transformation in the recombinant collagen market.
10,000 yuan ($1396.07) per kilogram! Recombinant collagen welcomes another “player.”
Recombinant collagen is not a new concept. As early as 2000, Professor Fan Daidi’s team at Northwest University in China broke through the bottleneck of low expression levels of recombinant collagen internationally, and found an efficient method of producing it, putting China at the forefront of recombinant collagen research and development.
Since then, recombinant collagen in China has undergone more than 20 years of technological upgrades and capacity expansions. With favorable policies and the entry of leading companies, around 2022, recombinant collagen has demonstrated increasing development potential and market value, earning the title of the “Year of Recombinant Collagen” in 2022.
According to Frost & Sullivan data, it is projected that by 2026, the market share of skincare products based on collagen will surpass that of hyaluronic acid. By 2027, the overall market size of collagen in China is expected to reach 173.8 billion yuan ($24.26 billion), with the market size of recombinant collagen products being 108.3 billion yuan ($15.12 billion), accounting for 62.3%.
In 2024, regarded as a pivotal year, many industry experts see it as a crucial turning point for the explosion of recombinant collagen. Currently, although well-established “key players” in the field of recombinant collagen still hold a significant market share, there are also many emerging companies breaking the advantage of the “established players” through new technological breakthroughs, with Mayliu Biotech being one of the representatives.
(Recombinant type III humanized collagen freeze-dried fibers)
Recently, Mayliu Biotech completed pilot production of multiple recombinant human type III collagen batches ranging from 16 kDa to 120 kDa, with a total production of 5 tons. By relying on the Pichia pastoris expression system, they achieved a secretion expression of collagen at a range of 12-16 g/L.
According to Mayliu Biotech’s current process estimation, their production of recombinant human type III collagen can achieve a selling price of only 10,000 yuan ($1396.07) per kilogram, far lower than the current market average of tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of yuan. This breakthrough solves the problem of high prices for commercially available collagen, and the related products are expected to be officially launched in the market after the Spring Festival this year.
CHAILEEDO has learned that Mayliu Biotech is a synthetic biology platform company focused on development and large-scale production. They are dedicated to developing high-tech bio-products and achieving efficient mass production. Their research and development team consists of high-end scientific research talents from Zhejiang University, with disciplinary backgrounds covering bioinformatics, synthetic biology, protein engineering, fermentation engineering, biomedical and bioprocess engineering, among others. They have rich experience in industrialization and can target market pain points, achieving comprehensive implementation of scientific research.
In November of last year, Mayliu Biotech also signed a comprehensive strategic cooperation agreement with the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The two parties will focus on the field of biomedicine and jointly build a world-class synthetic biology platform, creating a high-quality bio-pharmaceutical industry cluster.
Furthermore, leveraging their technological advantages, Mayliu Biotech has achieved full-chain coverage from research and development to production, establishing the innovative technology platform “Mayliu-Technology Platform,” which provides data and platform support for their subsequent research and development. Up to now, Mayliu Biotech has successfully synthesized more than 50 products, covering multiple fields such as medical aesthetics, skincare, biomedicine, and basic materials.
How to break through the barriers of scale and high prices?
When it comes to the currently booming ingredient of recombinant collagen, the focus on the research and development side is mainly on its efficacy, safety, and effectiveness. On the market side, questions such as whether the raw materials can be produced in large quantities, whether the quality is stable, and whether the price can be lower are also of concern.
In fact, low-cost mass production is one of the key factors for whether recombinant collagen can be widely used in the cosmetics industry and even surpass hyaluronic acid. So how does Mayliu Biotech break through the price barrier of recombinant collagen?
CHAILEEDO has learned that currently, most industrial preparations of recombinant collagen are achieved using Escherichia coli and Pichia pastoris as host cells for the production of human collagen. The former is mainly expressed intracellularly in a soluble form, while the latter adopts a secretion expression strategy. However, the expression levels are generally low. Under the current high market demand, companies need to solve the problem of production efficiency under scaled and standardized production. This is also the main reason for the high market price of collagen.
Therefore, in the early stages of research and development, Mayliu Biotech aimed to better address the issues of synthetic efficiency and “functional attributes” of the product. Based on extensive domestic and foreign literature and data, Mayliu Biotech transferred the key technology previously used in the field of rational protein design to collagen expression research. By reshaping the Pichia pastoris cell wall and focusing on the surface charge of the collagen N-terminal domain, they achieved “self-evolution” of multiple secretion signal peptides and “coupling optimization” of signal peptides and collagen codons through machine learning strategies. This ultimately significantly increased the secretion expression levels of multiple type III collagen proteins in Pichia pastoris (12-16 g/L), surpassing the engineered strains by 4-9 times and greatly reducing raw material costs.
Up to now, Mayliu Biotech has completed a pilot production of 5 tons, which means that they have achieved large-scale production of low-cost recombinant collagen products.
Mayliu Biotech’s technological breakthrough in the secretion expression of collagen undoubtedly breaks the market barrier of recombinant collagen in terms of price and directly reduces the pressure on companies in terms of raw material costs, thereby solving the application challenges of recombinant collagen from the raw material side.
With the cost issue resolved, the market will inevitably raise the next question: if the price is lowered, will the quality and purity of the product be compromised?
Mayliu Biotech informed CHAILEEDO that their currently developed recombinant human type III collagen raw materials not only have the common moisturizing and whitening effects seen in the market, but also emphasize multiple special effects such as skin repair, anti-inflammatory, anti-allergic, and anti-aging. The product purity is above 95%, making it a high-activity, high-purity, and high-quality raw material.
It can be said that Mayliu Biotech has broken through the two major barriers of price and mass production in the field of recombinant collagen, which not only adds new competitiveness to the current recombinant collagen market but also opens up a new path for the market application of this raw material.
A new round of technological breakthroughs
In fact, recombinant collagen is a market with high technological barriers and entry thresholds. It not only requires large capital investment but also necessitates researchers to have sufficient technical expertise in this field. This is why even though many major brands and companies are eager to enter the market, it is difficult for them to quickly obtain proprietary raw materials, leading to choices such as using Chinese recombinant collagen by certain international beauty giants or investments by companies like Shiseido and L Catterton, a private equity fund under LVMH.
As a newcomer in the recombinant collagen market, Mayliu Biotech was able to achieve breakthroughs in price and mass production because of its solid research and development foundation, as mentioned earlier, the innovative technology platform “Mayliu-Technology Platform” is the result of its research accumulation.
CHAILEEDO has learned that over the past 40 years, the members of the Mayliu Biotech team have accumulated more than 70 original chassis cell banks and nearly 5,000 functional protein gene libraries in related fields, providing abundant data support for the “Mayliu-Technology Platform”.
These massive chassis cells and gene component libraries help Mayliu Biotech to precisely design, assemble, and modify according to specific needs, constructing “cell factories” for the efficient synthesis of target substances. They establish regulatory mode models that match different functional proteins and continuously optimize the “cell factories” through a “Design-Build-Test-Learn (DBTL)” cycle, enabling ongoing technological iterations.
Furthermore, Mayliu Biotech utilizes various gene editing tools such as CRISPR-Cas and pG:ISSI, combined with techniques from protein engineering, synthetic biology, and microbial physiology engineering. They rapidly construct and optimize metabolic pathways in chassis cells, creating an engineered strain library. This greatly enhances the success rate of obtaining target production strains or microbial communities, thereby improving the synthetic efficiency of the “cell factories”.
It is worth mentioning that this platform covers the entire chain from research and development to production, providing technical support for all stages, including R&D laboratories, pilot experiments, and final mass production. In fact, as of now, Mayliu Biotech has achieved independent research and mass production of over 50 products.
In addition to the human type III collagen mentioned earlier, Mayliu Biotech is also developing the second generation of “super-functional human collagen” that combines skin trauma repair and medical aesthetics. Currently, the product has completed pilot trials and is undergoing animal experiments. According to Mayliu Biotech, the current expression level of the product is 3-4 g/L, and there is still room for improvement at the technical level. The product is expected to be launched around April-May this year, with an estimated selling price of 40,000 yuan ($5584.28) per kilogram.
The current recombinant collagen market is in a rapid growth phase, and competition has become intense. Those who can seize the current market gaps will become important leaders in the industry, and Mayliu Biotech has undoubtedly become an important pioneer in the current market. In fact, Mayliu Biotech believes that recombinant collagen products should not stop here, and they will develop more functionally powerful and high-quality recombinant collagen products in the future.
