Red lipstick is one of the most popular beauty products ever made. It’s also commonly formulated using a vibrant red dye made from a female insect called the cochineal beetle.
A quick search on leading beauty retailer websites reveals hundreds of products that feature carmine, including blush from Stila, eye shadow from Fenty Beauty, and lip color from Maybelline, M.A.C., Chanel and dozens more mass, prestige and luxury brands.
Carmine can be listed on ingredient labels as “cochineal extract,” “crimson lake,” “natural red 4,” “C.I. 75470” or simply “carmine.”
Announced Tuesday, California-based Debut Biotech has created a vegan, bio-identical alternative to carmine using biotechnology. 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.
“[Other biotech companies] have tried to do this for 15 years unsuccessfully,” Joshua Britton, founder and CEO of Debut Biotech, told Glossy. “[Carmine] is one of the most complicated molecular structures. From a science standpoint, it is hard.” That’s because, as Britton told Glossy, no one has understood just how this tiny beetle turns its bright red color. Without understanding the science happening inside the insect’s body, no one could copy it. “There were theories on how the beetle did it spanning 20 years and so much scientific controversy, but no one knew,” he said.
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.
Debut’s carmine breakthrough came when Britton’s team discovered a new family of enzymes responsible for a key step during the biomanufacturing process that mimic’s the beetle’s ability to create the pigment. This discovery could also lead to many more discoveries and unseen applications across beauty, food, medicine and other industries.
There is also increased purity in the synthetic carmine created by Debut, Britton said. Traditional carmine has around 10% purity, while the industry prefers 30% purity, but Debut’s new formula is 95% pure, he told Glossy. It also lacks a protein found in carmine that can irritate the skin.
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 70,000 cochineal beetles to make a fifth of a pound of colorant.
According to market research firm Straits Research, the global carmine market was valued at $47.88 million in 2023 and is estimated to reach $78.18 million by 2032 thanks to a compound annual growth rate of 5.6%.
Debut’s announcement is well timed with the FDA’s January ban of Red No. 3, a bright, cherry-colored synthetic dye commonly used in packaged foods like candy, cakes, cookies, popsicles, sports drinks and frosting, as well as certain ingested drugs like cough syrup and coated tablets. According to the FDA, Red No. 3 could be a carcinogen.
Britton is now in talks with food companies to potentially partner with, as the new molecule will need FDA approval to enter the food category, which could take time. In the meantime, growth in beauty will help to drive down material and production costs.
“We always start in the beauty market, because that’s really the best proof point,” Britton told Glossy. “[Beauty industry formulators] understand that the cost [of a new ingredient] will be slightly higher as you enter the beauty market, and then as you keep working on it, the cost will come down to [meet the cost of goods necessary to enter] the nutrition industry.”
The innovation also aligns with the growth of the vegan beauty marketplace. Animal testing and sourcing have become a sore spot for the beauty industry as vegan and cruelty-free products better resonate with changing consumer values, especially those of younger consumers.
According to Mintel market research company, 30% of U.S. consumers who have used beauty and personal care products in the past year perceive vegan ingredients as safe to use, while 16% say vegan ingredients are something they’re interested in or would like to learn more about.
According to Fortune Business Insights market research firm, the vegan beauty category was valued at $19.12 billion in 2024 and could grow to reach $32.56 billion by 2030. Europe dominated the vegan cosmetics market with a market share of 33.84% in 2024, according to the firm.
Many Gen Z- and millennial-focused brands, like E.l.f. Beauty, Rare Beauty, Colourpop, Milk Makeup, Thrive Causmetics, Pacifica Beauty, and dozens more vegan and cruelty-free brands, already use red dye alternatives to carmine, but they have their own downsides.
“Oftentimes when a brand moves away from animal-derived ingredients, they are forced to move to petrochemicals, and that was the kind of link we wanted to break,” Britton said. Petrochemicals have also recently fallen out of vogue as they are often sourced from petroleum, coal, natural gas and other energy sources with their own environmental and ethical considerations for consumers.
Britton believes the new bio-based carmine from Debut will be even cheaper than natural carmine and the vegan petrochemical alternatives available today.
Debut launched in San Diego in 2019 and is privately held. L’Oréal’s VC arm, Bold Ventures, is Debut’s majority investor, with $40 million invested thus far. Debut has taken on $70 million in total investment. Debut’s first in-house line, called Deinde, debuted via a direct-to-consumer model last year and is based on one of Debut’s first ingredient creations called naringenin, a patented niacinamide alternative made by Britton’s team through fermentation using molecules from grapefruit peels. The brand’s whipped cleanser and moisturizing face stick sell DTC for under $40, while the skin-strengthening serum goes for $68. Deinde launched its fourth product, a $46 eye cream, earlier this month.
The global biotechnology market was valued at $1.55 trillion in 2023 and is projected to grow to $4.61 trillion by 2034, according to Grand View Market Research.
Debut’s new ingredient will be available to the beauty industry around 2027 through Debut’s contract manufacturing business unit BiotechXBeautyLabs.
