Naturals Exposome Microbiome

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Our client Walgreens Boots Alliance are looking for breakthrough technologies and truly differentiated products for skin care in four key areas.

Application Deadline
June 21st, 2021
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Summary

Background

At Walgreens Boots Alliance we help people across the world lead healthier and happier lives. We believe that the health and resilience of people’s skin is vital to this and we are passionate in helping our consumers achieve maximum skin health throughout their lives. Poor skin health can have a significant impact on an individual’s quality of life and can contribute to reductions in both healthspan and lifespan.

Skin’s trajectory through life is determined by both intrinsic factors such as genetics and hormones and extrinsic factors such as the cumulative exposures it will face due to environment and lifestyle.

We want to provide our consumers with the insight, help and support to care for their skin with highly effective products that make tangible improvements to skin health and that are enjoyable to use and sustainable for our planet.

Walgreens Boots Alliance is the first global pharmacy-led, health and wellbeing enterprise. We are ideally placed to help people care for their skin, responding to the challenges of modern living.

Challenge

Our client Walgreens Boots Alliance are looking for breakthrough technologies and truly differentiated products for skin care in four key areas:

  1. The health and performance of skin is hugely affected by environmental and lifestyle stressors such as sun / UV, pollution, climate, allergens, stress and lack of sleep. The changes in skin through life are determined by exposure to these factors as much as chronological ageing and we are particularly interested in improving the skin’s resilience through life. We aim to help consumers proactively care for and maintain healthy skin rather than react to skin problems as they arise.
     
  2. Consumers are highly engaged with natural or nature derived ingredients to help them care for their skin. In addition, we are focused on harnessing the power of nature to deliver real improvements in skin health. We are particularly interested in high performance plant based, natural or naturally derived ingredients that can improve the health, resilience and appearance of the skin. We have particular interest in a) Peptides b) Retinoids or ingredients with retinoid activity c) Lipid replacement technologies.
     
  3. Prebiotics, probiotics and post biotics for skin health. There is emerging understanding of the important role that the microbiome plays in the health and resilience of skin, with both the skin microbiome and gut microbiome being implicated. We are interested in novel prebiotic, probiotic and postbiotics, which complement and strengthen the human microbiome leading to better performing skin, particularly those for treating and resolving acne, spots, oily and dry skin.
     
  4. Transdermal delivery technology. In order to treat skin effectively and to positively impact on the natural mechanisms that determine its function, we need to be able to control the delivery of active ingredients and technologies to specific target sites within the skin structure. We are interested in technologies that can enhance transdermal delivery, control the rate of delivery or maintain ingredients in their most active form whether through direct inclusion in topical products or from indirect approaches including light or energy-based technology.

Our focus is primarily on technology that has proven ability to positively impact skin health and performance at a clinical or subclinical level. We are keen to hear about technologies or products for a retail, D2C or pharmacy setting and that have a clear regulatory route to market.

We are interested in all types of consumer relevant solutions - topically applied technologies, ingestible or dietary supplements, devices, diagnostics, service offers or a combination of these as full consumer relevant propositions.

While driving improvements in skin performance is key to our research interests, we have equal interest in improving the sustainability of our business and products and we are interested in hearing about innovation in sustainability and environmental impact that can be applied particularly to skincare.

What's in it for you?

Through the opportunity to work with and partner with WBA we offer our knowledge, expertise and networks in consumer insight, science and research, product development and access to physical and digital retail channels in the UK, US and other international markets.

We are open minded and flexible about how a future partnership relationship could evolve, whether it be joint venturing to co-develop and bring an idea to market, exclusive licensing of technologies or IP or supply of product or technology to WBA.