Dr. Ting-Yu Yeh started his career as a plant biologist but these days he's researching everything from the effectiveness of cannabis to Covid-19 mutations to anti-aging skin cream out of a bedroom-sized lab in downtown Baltimore.
“Nobody needs to tell me what to do,” Yeh said, commenting on the advantages of entrepreneurship. “I get to decide what I study.”
Yeh, a Johns Hopkins University assistant research scientist, started his own company, Auxergen in 2015. Now he's getting ready to enter the consumer health market this month with his Eonic Cell Vitality skin cream. CEO Gregory Contreras believes the anti-aging lotion will provide a stable revenue source while the firm waits to gain government approval for some of its other products, such as a non-chemical solution to combat diseases in olive trees and a tool to measure the effectiveness of cannabis-derived pharmaceuticals
Auxergen is raising a $5 million venture capital round to fund the advertising and manufacturing of the skin cream with the hopes of earning $2 million in sales this year, Contreras said. The company already has the lab equipment in storage necessary to expand into a larger operation, he added, and plans to stay in Baltimore. Auxergen is currently based at the University of Maryland's Harbor Launch Incubator at 701 E. Pratt St. and has raised $800,000 in funding since 2017.
Contreras believes there's a strong market for Auxergen's skincare product as the Covid-19 pandemic made many consumers more health conscious. Many competing lotions are based around retinol, a form of vitamin A that is effective at anti-aging but comes with side effects like itching and redness that Yeh hopes his cream can avoid. Contreras hopes to target millennial consumers with the product and plans to set a price of $45 for a four to six-week supply and use influencers and other online advertising to spread the word.
A skin cream may seem like an unusual product for Yeh, but the scientist said he wanted to use his knowledge of cell biology to create something that regular people can use in daily life, instead of business-to-business products that are often invisible to the general public.
That same motivation to benefit the world led to Auxergen and Yeh conducting research into the Covid-19 virus. Yeh has published several papers about how the virus mutates to create different strains, proving that vaccination limits the virus’s spread by preventing mutations that can make the virus more resistant to treatment.
“I believe that any biotech company has a social responsibility to make the world a better place,” Yeh said. “I'm doing [Covid-19 research] not because I can earn anything from it or because I have Covid-19 products, but because I have the ability to tell people the truth.”
The company has several other products getting ready for development outside of the skin cream. Auxergen has a measurement tool to see how well the body absorbs the primary chemicals in cannabis, CBD and THC, to determine the effectiveness of cannabis-derived pharmaceuticals. Yeh is also using his expertise in plant biology to create a non-chemical solution to plant diseases. Auxergen has developed a bacteriophage, a virus programmed to target and destroy specific bacteria, to improve the health of olive oil trees and Contreras is hoping to earn European Union approval for it by 2025.
“It’s been like herding cats while climbing a mountain. We have so many cool technologies. It's a process of elimination to determine what has the best market potential,” Contreras said. “It’s been enormously fun."
