This is an episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, which features candid conversations about how today’s trends are shaping the future of the beauty and wellness industries. More from the series →
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The female cochineal beetle may not be aware of it, but it owes a debt of gratitude to Joshua Britton.
In February, Britton’s Debut Biotech unveiled a breakthrough set to disrupt how beauty products are formulated. Using biotechnology, the San Diego-based company created a vegan, bio-identical alternative to a common red cosmetics colorant traditionally harvested from the cochineal beetle.
This beetle pigment can be found on ingredient labels as “carmine,” “cochineal extract,” “crimson lake,” “natural red 4” or “C.I. 75470.” A quick online search reveals carmine in products from Stila, Fenty Beauty, Maybelline, M.A.C., Chanel and dozens more brands.
Carmine has been used for thousands of years and is believed to have been used by ancient civilizations like the Mayans. Today, carmine is sourced primarily from South or Central America, where the cochineal beetle lives. According to Smithsonian Magazine, it takes 350,000 cochineal beetles to make a single pound of colorant.
Britton has had a team of 10 researchers working on this for around four years. Debut has invested around $10 million in the project thus far, and the new, vegan pigment will soon be available for the industry at scale.
As previously reported by Glossy, biotechnology works by creating identical copies of a molecule in a lab, which can take years to decades, then creating the ingredient at scale through fermentation and cell-free technology. In layman’s terms, biotech beauty leverages sugarcane to create a bio-identical copy that’s often cheaper, safer and offers more ingredient purity.
Britton has a PHD in biochemistry and organic chemistry and launched Debut six years ago. Debut is backed by L’Oréal’s science-focused incubator arm Bold and was named a Time 100 2025 Most Influential Companies of the Year. The company also launched its first in-house skin-care brand, called Deinde, in 2024. Glossy awarded Britton a Glossy 50 award last year.
Britton joins the Glossy Beauty Podcast to discuss the breakthrough and its impact, and provides a primer on the power of biotechnology in beauty today.
But first, Lexy Lebsack is joined by senior reporter Emily Jensen to discuss the news of the week. This includes early results from Amazon Prime Days, which is on track to be the retailer’s largest annual sale yet.
Last year, Amazon sold more than 200 million items, and so far, it’s on track to beat the record. According to early data from Adobe, the retailer drove $7.9 billion in online spend on Tuesday, July 8, representing 9.9% year-over-year growth. This marks the single biggest e-commerce day so far this year, the firm reported. What’s more, the majority of sales on Tuesday came through a mobile device, at around 50.2%, contributing $4 billion in online spend, according to Adobe.
Jensen and Lebsack also discuss Sephora’s newest brand, Beauty of Joseon, which is known for its viral and hard-to-get sunscreens. Founder Sumin Lee joined the Glossy Beauty Podcast late last year to discuss its stunning growth in the U.S. market. The company hopes to sell $120 million in the U.S. market this year.
On the purpose of biotech in beauty
Britton: “We’re a biotech company and what that really means from the higher level is we use cutting-edge science to update how things are made. And so for most people who are listening to the podcast, they probably understand that a lot of the ingredients that go into products are made from either chemical processes or they’re extracted from plants, or they might be made through some other sort of process. But there really hasn’t been any advancements on that for literally 60 to 100 years. A lot of the products that we still use today as consumers still use things that are extracted from plants. They still use chemical processes, and so why that’s changing is two reasons. The first is there’s this huge drive to sustainability and using processes that don’t destroy the earth to create these consumer products. And then the second drive is that [consumers] want higher performing, safe, efficacious products. And for that, we need new ingredients.”
On creating a vegan carmine alternative
Britton: “[Carmine pigment] has been used since the time of the Mayans. [For example] the kind of artwork done in caves, whenever you have a red color, was typically done by crushing this beetle. And this beetle has this bright, beautiful, vibrant red. It’s highly stable, and so it was used in clothing, wall paint and makeup back then. [Today, it’s used] in lipstick, blush and powder, so it was the perfect example for us to use biotechnology to ask, ‘How does the beetle do this?’ Let’s understand that, then let’s translate it to our biotechnology. And now, instead of having beetles grown and harvested and crushed and extracted, what we’re able to do is simply do this the exact same way we make beer. We add sugar, some microbes in there, and they take the lessons of the beetle, and now they turn sugar all the way through to the same molecule. And that is just the perfect example of how science can allow that breakthrough to come through.”
