Outer Biosciences has raised about $23M to build a skin-assay licensing business

Why it matters

Outer Biosciences is testing whether proprietary cell and human-tissue experiments can improve compound discovery enough to support a licensing business. Publicly available materials do not yet establish model benchmarks, clinical outcomes or revenue.

Michael Polansky is trying to turn experiments on donated human skin into a compound-licensing business. Outer Biosciences pairs machine learning with full-thickness human skin that remains viable for about four weeks, using the resulting data to identify and test skin-health compounds.

Outer's YUNA platform combines computational screening, automated cell assays and studies on living tissue. The commercial plan is to license discoveries or sell ingredients to beauty and pharmaceutical companies, while also giving partners access to the platform for custom research. TechCrunch reported on August 21 that Outer has raised approximately $23 million and employs 19 people.

How YUNA filters compounds

Outer describes a staged process rather than a model trained exclusively on skin assays. Chemical structures first enter a foundation model that predicts bioactivity and toxicity. A separate module evaluates candidates for manufacturability, intellectual-property considerations and other commercial constraints.

Candidates that clear those screens move to robotic, high-throughput cell testing. The multimodal data from those cell-based experiments are fed back into the foundation model. The strongest candidates then advance to human-skin assays, and those results also become training data, according to Outer Biosciences' description of its machine-learning workflow.

Outer says its models can screen about 750 million compounds a year and capture more than 30,000 multimodal data points per tested compound. Its public materials describe multi-donor datasets from hundreds of individuals across skin types.

YUNA's full-thickness tissue contains the epidermis, dermis and multiple resident cell types. Outer currently states that the tissue remains viable for four weeks, allowing researchers to follow biological responses that develop over longer periods. Outer says its donor datasets span ages, races, genders and Fitzpatrick skin types.

Outer obtains de-identified adult tissue designated for research, generally surgical remnants or excess skin from elective procedures. Its tissue-supply policy says donations require informed consent, cannot be suitable for transplantation and are not resold as tissue. Outer says it vets procurement partners for donor privacy and compliance with applicable laws.

The business depends on a short candidate list

Outer intends to make money from two related activities. It can license or sell compounds discovered through YUNA, and it can run studies for biotech, pharmaceutical, skincare, cosmetics and ingredient companies. Outer says its platform supports research collaborations that test compounds, answer biological questions or reduce uncertainty around development decisions.

Polansky told TechCrunch that Outer is producing a candidate roughly every six weeks, has six active leads and has recorded several dozen additional hits. He expects four active leads to move toward commercialization.

The financing remains only partly visible. A 2022 SEC filing recorded $4 million sold toward a planned $5 million equity offering following a first sale on March 14, 2022. TechCrunch reported that total funding has since reached about $23 million and named Calm Capital, Brighter Capital and Polansky's Hawktail as early backers.

Human skin models already have serious incumbents

Outer is entering a market with several approaches to generating human-relevant biological data. Genoskin supplies viable human skin for pharmaceutical, medical-device and cosmetics testing. Vivodyne, a drug-discovery company, combines lab-grown human tissues, robotic experiments, multimodal data and machine learning. Outer uses donated full-thickness skin rather than Vivodyne's lab-grown tissues.

L'Oreal has described reconstructed-skin models, 3D bioprinting work and AI analysis of skin-aging biomarkers. That internal capacity matters because companies such as L'Oreal are potential customers for outside discovery platforms and potential competitors with their own tissue data and product-development operations.

Outer therefore has to establish that YUNA adds useful predictive power beyond established tissue-testing services and internal beauty-company research. Four-week viability and broad donor representation give the company room to study responses across time and different skin types, but its public materials do not provide model benchmarks, prospective validation results or clinical outcomes.

Regulation will vary with the claims attached to those compounds. The Food and Drug Administration says products intended to affect the body's structure or function can be regulated as drugs even when marketed for wrinkles or aging. Ingredients positioned around regeneration, inflammation or other biological effects may consequently face requirements beyond those applied to ordinary cosmetics.

Polansky brings an investor's background to the lab

Polansky studied applied mathematics and computer science at Harvard and worked at Bridgewater Associates before becoming a principal at Founders Fund. He later managed Sean Parker's investment and philanthropic interests and helped establish the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy, experience that gave him sustained exposure to biomedical research before he founded Outer in 2022.

That background helps explain YUNA's design as both a research system and a licensing operation. Outer must now show that its internal screening figures can yield compounds that customers will license or buy.