What is the basis of recombinant collagen to break the ＂stuck neck＂ difficulty？

March 15th is the International Consumer Rights Day, and it is also the time for China central media to focus on exposing many commodity quality problems. On this day, many brands often hope that "no news is good news", and few enterprises will take the initiative to make their technology transparent and make product quality commitments on this day.

But giant creatures are an exception.

On the day of "315", Giant Bio released "Giant 315 Transparency Commitment": it promised that after March 15th this year, its recombinant collagen products will be labeled with transparency commitment letters, including: homologous transparency, typing transparency, source transparency and content transparency, and will continue to insist on not selling recombinant collagen raw materials directly to the outside world. This transparent commitment was released simultaneously on Xinhuanet and People’s Health.

Recombinant collagen is one of the most popular biotechnology subdivision tracks in recent years. According to Jost Sullivan’s prediction, the market size of China’s recombinant collagen products will increase from 18.5 billion yuan in 2022 to 108.3 billion yuan in 2027; Juzi Bio, a company that has been deeply involved in recombinant collagen technology and mass production for 24 years, is also a global leader in recombinant collagen certified by Euromonitor International.

Deep technical accumulation is the greatest confidence to actively "expose" and make quality commitments.

The history of the development of a skin care product is the history of a new raw material constantly opening up new markets.

From surfactants, emulsifiers, polymers and emollients to ultraviolet filters, active ingredients, boson and hyaluronic acid, the birth and popularization of each new raw material can open up a big market in the cosmetics industry. For a long time in the past, many raw materials used in the cosmetic and skin care industry were in the hands of overseas big-name manufacturers, which led to a huge product matrix and solid competition barriers, such as P&G’s research and development on the whitening mechanism of nicotinamide, Avene’s development of natural spring water, L ‘Oré al Group’s product line in Bose, and so on.

In other words, how firmly overseas manufacturers grasp raw materials, how serious the situation of China manufacturers being stuck in the neck is.

However, with the improvement of China’s industrial chain, the rise of manufacturers and the change of consumers’ demands, the situation has changed recently. In the past two years, one of the hottest areas in the skin care industry and the layout of many manufacturers is undoubtedly recombinant collagen.

Collagen, one of the main components of human tissue structure, widely exists in human and animal skin, muscle, bones and internal organs. Its main function is to maintain and support the normal physiological functions of cells, tissues and organs and to participate in the repair of human tissue damage. It is worth mentioning that the loss of collagen is one of the main reasons for human skin aging. With the increase of age, the ability of human fibroblasts to synthesize collagen will decrease, and the skin will gradually relax, dry and lose elasticity.

Although it is an "artifact" for anti-aging, repairing and moisturizing, in the early days, the source of collagen was mainly extracted from animals such as fish, pigs and cattle. After all, people are different from animals. Extracting from animals will have potential defects such as "risk of disease infection" and "rejection reaction". Therefore, if you want to develop products that can be widely and safely used, it is urgent to study the corresponding synthesis technology.

More than 20 years ago, the giant creature, which was still in the initial stage, realized that collagen production was the core link of raw material production and product building, so it took "collagen biomaterials" as the team’s key research direction and focused on raw material research and development with reference to the classic "Double Ten Principles" of "spending 10 years and investing 1 billion dollars to develop a core component" in the industry.

But the research and development process is not smooth sailing.

As early as 2005, Juzi Bio obtained the first patent authorization of recombinant collagen invention in China by virtue of "proprietary recombinant collagen technology", but the long-term huge expenditure on research and development still caused temporary losses to the company. At that time, an international brand noticed the leading edge of Giant Bio in recombinant collagen technology and offered $100 million to acquire its patented technology.

However, Giants resisted the pressure of short-term losses, and chose to control the core raw materials independently and maintain the true color of recombinant collagen as "China component". It can also be seen that the giant creature does not directly sell raw materials to the outside world. In fact, it is not a new thing that was only available in 315 this year, but a determination made as early as the initial stage.

Long-term tempering and accumulation have finally brought rewards to giant creatures. At the end of 2022, Juzi Bio issued a prospectus and listed on the Hong Kong stock market, so that the world’s talents could have a complete glimpse of how many hard-core technologies this company has reserved for more than 20 years in raw material research and development:

In 2013, the recombinant collagen technology won the "National Technology Invention Award";

In 2016, "a kind of human collagen and its production method" won the China Patent Gold Award; According to official website, Juzi Bio currently has more than 80 patents and patent applications, and has the world’s leading fermentation and processing technology; At the same time, it has more than 40 kinds of recombinant collagen reserves, including a variety of full-length recombinant collagen (recombinant human collagen I, II and III), a variety of functional enhanced recombinant collagen and a variety of recombinant collagen functional fragments, making it one of the most abundant enterprises in the world.

The only enterprise in China that can produce full-length single-stranded recombinant collagen, and also has the smallest recombinant collagen peptide in the industry; By the end of 2022, the existing annual production capacity is 10.88 tons, and the production capacity under construction is 212.5 tons, which has a leading edge in the industrial mass production of recombinant collagen raw materials;

Participated in drafting and formulating an industry standard: YY/T1849-2022 "Recombinant Collagen" industry standard; Took the lead in drafting three group standards: T/ZGKSL004-2023 "Recombinant Collagen Raw Materials for Cosmetics", T/ZGKSL009-2023 "Determination Method of Recombinant Collagen Promoting Collagen Secretion in Human Cells" and T/ZGKSL010-2023 "Determination Method of Transdermal Absorption of Recombinant Collagen".

More importantly, when Giants broke the monopoly of raw materials of international enterprises and realized China’s self-reliance, consumers’ mentality was also changing.

With the growth of national economy and the improvement of residents’ income, "Yan value economy" has become an important growth point in the new economy. More and more consumers are willing to spend money on "face" and the demand for beauty and skin care products is growing.

Moreover, unlike in the past, consumers are beginning to replace the concept of "brand skin care" with the concept of "product skin care", ABC skin care formula has become popular, and "ingredient parties" have begun to emerge, and they have begun to actively choose the ingredients and products that best match individuals.

These gratifying changes have brought the cosmetic consumption market into a new virtuous circle: ingredients have become more important, brands have paid more attention to R&D and long-term, and consumers have paid more attention to new brands and products.

In such a social atmosphere, the long-term accumulation of research and development achievements of giant creatures undoubtedly laid a good foundation for them to build a perfect product matrix.

For example, recombinant type I collagen can promote the proliferation and differentiation of epithelial cells and keratinocytes, produce more intercellular lipids and ceramides, and repair and improve the skin barrier function; For another example, recombinant type III collagen can promote the proliferation and differentiation of fibroblasts, and secrete more extracellular matrix, including autologous collagen, elastin, cytokines, etc., to enhance skin elasticity, firmness and wrinkle resistance; For another example, recombinant human-like collagen acts on the repair of defective cells, reducing the secretion of inflammatory factors, scavenging free radicals, promoting wound healing and mucosal repair; In addition, the Mini small molecule recombinant collagen peptide also acts on the dermis, which can not only promote the growth of collagen, but also directly infuse collagen (R&D suggests directly supplementing collagen). While retaining the collagen structure, it can reach at least 217Da(GAA, glycine-alanine-alanine) and can quickly penetrate the epidermis.

Moreover, recombinant collagen technology overcomes most shortcomings of traditional methods to extract collagen, such as rejection, insolubility in water, cytotoxicity and difficulty in processing.

More importantly, the giant creature realized that a good product is not only good in technology and efficacy, but also relevant to consumers and trusted by them.

First of all, Giants constantly enable consumers to intuitively perceive the role of recombinant collagen through cutting-edge technology.

For example, in order to verify the transdermal absorption ability of recombinant collagen, Giant Bio took C5HA recombinant collagen bionic combination raw materials as test samples, and through the skin two-photon microscopic imaging system SUPERVISION-780, it was proved that C5HA recombinant collagen bionic combination raw materials can be absorbed through the skin stratum corneum, which is the main way of cosmetics transdermal absorption.

For another example, in the verification of collagen-promoting ability, giant creatures used the two-photon microscopic imaging technology that once entered the space environment with Shenzhou XV, which is also called "life science in the 21st century". Under normal living conditions, they can see the activity process of cells and molecules in living organisms.

Secondly, on the basis of abundant technical reserves and transparent and visible effects, Juzi Bio has launched a lot of customized brand content according to the prevailing trend of efficacy skin care and the emergence of component groups.

For example, last year, the documentary "The Battle of China and Raw Materials" was released. In the film, the story of giant biological research team developing China component recombinant collagen to solve the problem of core raw materials and core technology stuck in the neck was revealed, and in 2011, it successfully launched a professional dermatological skin care brand, Fumei.

From the establishment of industry standards, to the visualization of effects and documentary records, it shows the true nature of Gianzi Bio’s long-term investment in product research and development, breaking the monopoly with China ingredients and empowering the light of domestic products. It is through this mutual achievement with consumers that the products of brands such as Fufumei and Kelijin under Juzi Bio have repeatedly become "explosions" and gained a firm foothold in the efficacy skin care market. In 2021, 2022 and the first half of 2023, the revenues were 1.552 billion yuan, 2.364 billion yuan and 1.606 billion yuan respectively, up by 30.41% and 52.30% year-on-year.

However, for giant creatures, overcoming the problem of raw materials and launching explosive products are still only the starting point, and the trust of consumers is the key to its continuous development.

With the accumulation of technology and explosive products, the next question for giant creatures is, how to build a brand? What kind of brand do you want to be?

We can find many ways to make a high reputation in the short term by repeating the development history of consumer goods industry, such as finding celebrity endorsements; But to continue, we must rely on product strength: whether the quality of a commodity is good or not, and whether consumers believe it or not?

In the past few years, in the skin care market, more overseas companies have mastered the core ingredients, and many domestic brands can only promote their own mysterious formulas and black technologies.

But today, scientific skin care products are no longer the "patents" of international brands. After more than ten years of research, Juzi Bio successfully added recombinant collagen to its product matrix, opening up the chain from scientific research to sales.

However, there are still misunderstandings and concerns in the market, such as "collagen can’t be absorbed through skin" and "whether domestic raw materials will be acquired by overseas companies".

Giant creatures solve these questions in a straightforward way: transparency.

On March 15th, Giant Bio released the "Giant 315 Transparency Commitment"-

(1) "Homologous transparency" means that the product uses recombinant collagen which is 100% homologous to human body and is not confused with animal-derived collagen;

(2) "transparent typing", which clearly indicates the type of recombinant collagen eggs in the product and the skin problems it aims at;

(3) "transparent source", indicating the manufacturer of recombinant collagen raw materials in the product to ensure the quality, safety and traceability;

(4) "transparent content" means that the recombinant collagen component in the product is effectively added without conceptual addition, so as to ensure the efficacy of the component.

Giant creature

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It is also said that starting from March 15, 2024, every box of formal dress recoverable collagen bars bought by consumers will be labeled with transparent commitment labels one after another. As the first company in the industry to make a clear commitment, Giant Bio also called on all domestic and foreign brands that use recombinant collagen to join the transparent commitment.

As a company that has been established for more than 20 years, it continues to deepen scientific research, make products seriously, and build consumers’ trust through transparent operation. The "self-exposure" of Giant Bio 315 this time provides a reference standard for products that are subsequently put into the market, so that consumers can "have evidence to follow" when purchasing recombinant collagen products.

In addition, on March 15th, Juzi Bio also announced that in the coming year, it will continue to insist on not directly selling recombinant collagen raw materials to the outside world, raise the threshold of industry access and competition, try its best to avoid the problems that products cannot take effect, product quality and consumers’ rights and interests cannot be guaranteed due to "conceptual addition", "scientific compounding" and "lack of full-chain quality control", and guide the market to a benign competition track centered on quality and innovation.

In the period when the demand for recombinant collagen is ushered in a blowout, a series of active commitments of giant creatures can be said to be a milestone in the development history of recombinant collagen industry.

On the one hand, Juzi Bio is in line with the trend of the times that more and more consumers of the "component party" are paying more and more attention to raw materials and efficacy. It is impossible for brands to make money with simple information gap and "black technology". Only concentrating on research and development is a long-term solution; On the other hand, it also shows that Giants’ research and development ability is getting stronger and stronger, and they are confident after mastering the core raw materials and ingredients.

There is a saying in A Brief History of Mankind: People live in a dual reality, on the one hand, there are such objective realities as rivers, trees and lions; On the other hand, there is also the imaginary reality of God, enterprise and country.

Recombinant collagen is an "objective reality", while the technology research and development and quality commitment of Giant Bio is an "imaginary reality": to make the ingredients that were originally difficult to realize independently become a reality, and to update and better meet the needs of consumers.