Spiderwort Biotechnologies announced this week it has received the green light from Health Canada to start testing its plant-based product aimed at preventing wrinkles and correcting skin deformations.
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An Ottawa biotech company best-known for technology that can regenerate spinal cord tissue is poised to conduct human clinical trials on an all-natural alternative to Botox and is looking to raise tens of millions of dollars to finance its research.
Spiderwort Biotechnologies announced this week it has received the green light from Health Canada to start testing its plant-based product aimed at preventing wrinkles and correcting skin deformations.
Spiderwort’s invention, dubbed CelluJuve, is a gel that can be injected into the skin much like cosmetic botulinum toxin, commonly known as Botox, and other legacy wrinkle-reducing products such as Juvederm and Restylane.
But those products can also cause potential harmful side effects that aren’t an issue with CelluJuve, the company says.
For example, Botox uses a substance derived from bacteria to block nerve signals to muscles in the face, which prevents the muscles from moving and stops wrinkles from developing. In rare cases, it can lead to a serious illness called iatrogenic botulism if it’s administered improperly.
By contrast, Spiderwort’s dermal filler is made from cellulose, an organic compound that helps give fruits and other plants their shape. Co-founder and CEO Dr. Charles Cuerrier says the chemical-free product is safer, targets wrinkles and other skin deformations with more precision and lasts longer than Botox and the like, which typically need to be re-injected every six to 12 months to be effective.
“It’s always been the same (cosmetic) products for a million years now,” Cuerrier says. “The industry is really looking for a new technology, and we think we (have) that new product.”
The cellulose found in the new product comes from the flesh of apples – specifically McIntoshes, a fruit Canada made famous. In basic terms, Cuerrier says, cellulose consists of “long chains of sugar,” and the sugary strands that make up the white insides of McIntosh apples just happen to have the ideal shape and dimensions to help keep human skin wrinkle-free.
“That was important for us – a Canadian company using McIntosh apples,” he adds with a grin.
Initially, Spiderwort plans to use the high-tech gel to target nasolabial folds – natural creases in the skin better known as “smile lines” or “laugh lines” that run from the sides of the nose to the corners of the mouth. Eventually, testing will be expanded to other parts of the face such as the cheeks and jawbones.
Cuerrier says researchers still aren’t sure exactly how long CelluJuve will protect against wrinkles. But he’s confident his firm’s next-generation dermal filler has the potential to take a hefty chunk out of the global market for Botox, which some marketing firms forecast could be worth more than US$20 billion by the early 2030s.
“We don’t need chemicals. It’s natural,” he explains. “How the body will react to (CelluJuve) is really one of the things that we are looking to better understand.”
Costly endeavour
Still, Cuerrier is well aware of the hurdles that lie ahead.
Gaining regulators’ stamp of approval for new health technologies is a long, painstaking process. Many more trials will likely follow the initial three-month study, and Cuerrier predicts it will be at least three years before CelluJuve will get the green light for commercial use from Health Canada, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and health authorities in other countries.
Such research isn’t cheap. Spiderwort just launched a series-B fundraising campaign, with a target of US$45 million to finance more testing of CelluJuve and CelluBridge, a different but related technology that uses a proprietary cellulose-based material that helps repair and regenerate spinal cord tissue.
Founded in 2015, the company sprouted from co-founder Dr. Andrew Pelling’s lab at the University of Ottawa, where students experiment in “biohacking” exercises that include carving apples into the shape of an ear and growing human tissue on them.
Spiderwort was part of Invest Ottawa’s accelerator program and in 2019 became the first tenant at La Cité’s state-of-the-art research facility. Earlier this spring, it opened a new cleanroom at La Cité – a controlled environment with minimal airborne particles designed specifically for producing biomaterials such as CelluJuve and CelluBridge.
The 17-person company has already raised US$16 million from a mix of international investors such as Hong Kong-based VC fund Horizons Ventures and high-profile local financial backers, including Mark Zekulin, the former chief executive of cannabis powerhouse Canopy Growth, MindBridge Analytics founder Solon Angel and former Assent CEO Andrew Waitman, who called Spiderwort’s approach to regenerating and rejuvenating body tissue “life-changing.”
But Cuerrier says much more capital will be needed to get the products over the finish line. And like many Canadian life sciences companies, Spiderwort is looking to investors in the United States and other foreign countries to supply it with the cash it needs.
How the current global trade war will affect the company's latest money-raising campaign is anyone’s guess, Cuerrier says.
“Everything is changing every day, so we’ll see what the future will look like. There is not really a textbook pathway when you have a life science product.”
