Key Takeaways:
“Firming” and “tightening” have been ubiquitous buzzwords in anti-aging skincare for decades. But with the meteoric rise of GLP-1s, skincare brands cannot get away with using “firming” and “tightening” as marketing speak anymore—consumers demand noticeable results. Joshua Britton, founder and CEO of biotech company Debut, believes his lab’s new topical active, DermCeutical EDL, can deliver just that, bringing “the dawn of a new era in topicals.”
Through Debut’s proprietary platform, which integrates AI, skin genomics, and biotechnology, Britton and his San Diego–based team believe they have developed a first-of-its-kind active that can biologically activate the same cellular pathways targeted by in-office treatments.
The way Britton describes developing topical actives like DermCeutical EDL makes it sound like a simple process: first his team needs to understand how an in-office treatment works, and then they copy it. “Once we understand the science, we can create a new ingredient to mimic it,” Britton told BeautyMatter.
While many “tightening” skincare products on the market may give consumers a temporary, cosmetic lift, products formulated with DermCeutical EDL, according to Britton, will give users sustained results. “It’s definitely not for immediate results, but for long-term underlying root causes of skin sagging, skin aging, that’s where this ingredient plays.”
The brand conducted a 12-week clinical study on DermCeutical EDL, in which dermatologist-blinded assessments demonstrated a 100% fine-line improvement rate and 73% improvement in skin sagging, compared to placebo, according to the brand.
Damaged Goods
Recognizing that in-office treatments like Ultherapy, Thermage, and Morpheus8 work by creating controlled injuries to the skin, triggering the body’s wound-healing cascade, Debut looked to develop an ingredient that could achieve the same skin-tightening results without the inflammation and downtime that comes with these nonsurgical treatments. “You are using those machines to damage the skin, to cause a response, to trigger skin tightening. You're damaging, to heal,” Britton said.
And sometimes that damage, when done incorrectly or by an untrained technician, can have significant implications. In October 2025, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a safety communication, Potential Risks with Certain Uses of Radiofrequency (RF) Microneedling, warning the use of these devices for aesthetic procedures can cause serious complications. “The FDA is aware of reports of serious complications (adverse events) including burns, scarring, fat loss, disfigurement, and nerve damage, and the need for surgical repair or medical intervention to treat injuries.”
GLP-1 Supply = Skin-Tightening Demand
Not to say adverse events are the norm for these types of procedures. In fact, with the explosion of GLP-1s like Ozempic, Zepbound, and Wegovy—global GLP-1 market size was estimated at $70 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $201.8 billion by 2033, according to Grand View Research—came the dramatic growth of nonsurgical skin-tightening treatments.
The global nonsurgical skin-tightening market was valued at $1 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $1.6 billion by 2029, per Research and Markets. Britton doesn’t see DermCeutical EDL as replacing these types of in-office treatments but rather as helping to sustain the costly results.
And Britton has no intention to gatekeep DermCeutical EDL during this GLP-1 revolution. Yes, Debut has its own skincare brand, Deinde, which operates independently of its parent company and provides Debut with real-world insights. And, having Deinde helps Debut’s team work out how to speak the science to the consumer, which is vital, according to Britton. “I say this all the time to my teams: scientific communication is the most important vital aspect of biotechnology.”
But once Debut fine-tunes how to distill down the science for the consumer with Deinde, the company works with hundreds of brands on their formulations with new biotech ingredients, according to Britton. “For our technology to really impact the world it has to be in thousands of brands. We need to be powering the innovation behind some of the world's best brands.”
Biotech Renaissance
Once you get Britton talking about what’s next for Debut, he fires off everything from creating an ingredient with the same effects as red light therapy to developing an active that mimics retinoids but without the irritating side effects—all powered by the brand’s genomics database with more than 500 million data points. “We can tell it [the platform] to make a new ingredient or ask what genes are associated with fibroblasts and keratinocytes. What that means is we can go, okay, we want to activate specific pathways, but we don't want to turn on the inflammatory markers. What would be the ingredient to do that?”
Whether conquering red lights and retinoids or turning buzzwords like “firming” and “tightening” into reality, it is clear that Britton and Debut are just getting started in bringing skincare biotech to the masses.