PORTLAND, MAINE - It’s the time of year again for Maine’s biggest nuisance; Browntail Moth season is upon us! As Maine brings its beautiful summer weather, the Browntail Moth caterpillars are awakened. Browntail moth caterpillars have tiny, poisonous hairs that cause skin rashes and irritation when in contact with human skin. These creatures are back, at a scale larger than we’ve ever seen.
“Last year, the infestation was the worst in the state’s history,” reports Patrick Whittle for the Associated Press. “This year, the Maine Forest Service predicts encounters with the moths and their hairs to be as bad or worse than 2021”.
Last summer, Maine residents scrambled to concoct their own homemade remedies to combat the irritation. In the midst of the scramble, this up-and-coming Maine skincare brand using lobster as an ingredient, stumbled into a solution. Amber Boutiette and Patrick Breeding, two recent University of Maine graduates, started Marin Skincare to bring relief to people struggling with dry, ‘upset’ skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis. The duo launched the business in October of 2020 and have experienced incredible growth.
“Well, we actually use a protein found in lobsters, which is responsible for their ability to pop off and regenerate limbs. It turns out, in the same way it does this, it is really good at repairing the skin barrier. So far, we’ve used it to help tens of thousands with dry, dermatitis-prone skin, starting with me.”- Boutiette.
Last year, Marin’s very ‘Maine’ cream started to get reviews for our very ‘Maine’ caterpillar problem.
“At first we were like, oh cool Browntail moth rash, that’s kind of weird that it’s working, but that’s great! Then as more and more came in, we started to ask ‘what’s going on here?’” – says Boutiette.
As scientists themselves, they knew there had to be a connection between their remedy and the Browntail Moth rash. What they found confirmed their curiosity. According to the Maine Department of Health and Human Services, the rash is actually furs from the caterpillars getting stuck in your skin barrier, causing physical and chemical irritation, otherwise known as contact dermatitis. Now it all made sense, Boutiette describes.
“When we realized it was actually contact dermatitis, it all made sense. Eczema is just another term for dermatitis, and contact dermatitis is a sub type of dermatitis. This whole time we’ve been helping people with contact dermatitis caused by many things; everything from skin-irritating makeup, excessive hand washing… now from Browntail moth rash. It all made sense.”
Last year, local pharmacies couldn’t keep the shelves stocked with solutions. Nathan’s Pharmacy, a Wellness Pharmacy and Apothecary out of Boothbay Harbor explains, “All of the skincare products we had to help were sold out, and even the suppliers of ingredients for homemade remedies were backed up.” This year, Marin is prepared.
“We over-invested in inventory because we know the problem’s only getting worse. We want to be able to help people in the summer with Browntail moth rashes and sunburns, as well as in the fall and winter come dry skin season” – says Breeding.
For Marin, bringing relief to people of Maine and New England has come full circle.
“It’s so cool that we’re able to take this protein, a natural, upcycled byproduct of our iconic lobster fishery, and use it to help everyday people in Maine, New England and beyond” – says Boutiette.
You can find Marin products online at www.MarinSkincare.com, on Instagram at @marinskincareus, and at select local retailers ahead of the Browntail moth caterpillar surge!
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That’s exactly what you’ll find in the Soothing Hydration Cream by Marin Skin Care, a Maine skin care brand founded by Patrick Breeding and Amber Boutiette.
Both Patrick and Amber have Master’s in Biomedical Engineering, which allowed them to connect with some of Maine’s most experienced marine resource industry experts. Eventually, this led them to discover marine glycoproteins and their incredible use to soothe and calm aggravated, dry skin.
Amber can tell you that marine glycoproteins work from her own experience; she lived with eczema for years, trying product after product to find something that worked for her skin, with no success — until she formulated a product with the newly discovered marine glycoproteins.
After a few days she noticed her eczema had finally calmed down, with an impressive visible improvement in her skin. This rapid improvement inspired Amber and Patrick to build the Marin
brand so they could share this unique ingredient and help others with eczema, psoriasis, and dry skin.
At the time of writing this review, the brand offers just one product: Soothing Hydration Cream. This face and body cream is said to visibly soothe dry, stressed skin with naturally abundant marine glycoproteins, deliver deep hydration with hyaluronic acid and squalane, and provide a gentle barrier to help skin retain moisture with no greasy residue.
But is Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream right for you? To help you decide, we’ll give you all the details on the key ingredients in this formula, as well as the research that supports (or doesn’t support) their use in skin care. We’ll also share some Marin Skin Care reviews so that you can get an idea of what customers really think of this product.
Before we get into the details, here’s the TL;DR if you just want to know whether or not Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream is right for you.
In order to determine how well Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream performs, we’ll have to evaluate the key ingredients in this formula. Let’s get started.
Hemocyanin (Marine Glycoprotein)
Glycoproteins are small molecules that consist of a protein surrounded by sugars, which dissolve easily in water. This allows them to bind and lock-in moisture, while delivering oxygen to your skin, promoting skin barrier strength, elasticity, and smoothness.
Marin Skin Care sustainably and ethically sources their marine glycoproteins from lobsters, creating a product with a novel ingredient that visibly calms and soothes dry, aggravated skin patches, while helping lock in moisture.
However, we have to point out that there aren’t any clinical studies with marine glycoproteins, just anecdotal evidence from Amber and the few Marin Skin Care reviews on the internet.
Emollients
Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream includes a blend of skin-softening emollients, including shea butter, caprylic/capric triglyceride, coconut oil, and squalane. An emollient is an oily substance that fills in the spaces between dead skin cells, thus creating a smooth skin surface. These ingredients not only soften skin, but also help to lock in moisture, thereby alleviating dry skin.
Vitamin E
Vitamin E is included in the Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream because it’s a
fat-soluble antioxidant that’s essential for the maintenance of healthy skin.
Specifically, vitamin E is a “chain-breaking” antioxidant because it can hinder the chain reaction induced by free radicals, according to a publication by Dermatology News. This is important because free radicals contribute to signs of aging, such as fine lines, wrinkles, sagging skin, and age spots.
Another function of vitamin E is to help the skin retain moisture by strengthening the skin’s barrier function. When vitamin E is delivered to your skin through the sebaceous (oil) glands, it improves water-binding capacity and hydrates the stratum corneum (the uppermost layer of skin).
Vitamin E may also have related anti-inflammatory roles in the skin, which is particularly helpful for those with inflammatory skin conditions like eczema and psoriasis.
Hyaluronic Acid
The final key ingredient in Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream is hyaluronic acid, a type of glycosaminoglycan (sugar molecule) that attracts moisture from the environment and draws that moisture into the skin’s upper layers.
Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream is suitable for use on your face, hands, and body.
To apply, rub a dime-sized amount into your skin in the morning, throughout the day as-needed to spot-treat, and at night after exfoliating or simply before bed. For extra-irritated skin patches, use the Soothing Hydration Cream to keep it as moist as possible throughout the day.
When applying to areas of your face, as a relatively thick, rich cream, we recommend starting with a pea-sized drop and increasing the amount applied if necessary.
Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream is sold exclusively on the brand’s website (marinskincare.com).
Marin Skin Care Soothing Hydration Cream costs $34.99 USD for a 4 ounce tube.
]]>NEEDHAM, Mass. — Since 1987 the University of Maine Lobster Institute has been a center of discovery, innovation, and outreach at the University of Maine. Its mission is to promote, conduct and communicate research focused on the sustainability of the American lobster fishery in the US and Canada. The Institute also provides technical and educational outreach, disseminates research findings in understandable and accessible ways, and convenes conferences and workshops to engage stakeholders in solving challenges faced by this iconic fishery.
Two college students working with some of Maine’s most experienced marine resource industry experts, discovered marine glycoproteins and their incredible use to soothe and calm aggravated, dry skin. Marin Skincare was born from lobster waste product - a lotion to help soothe human skin.
Original article: https://www.wcvb.com/article/love-of-lobster-the-researchers-at-the-university-of-maine-lobster-institute-work-to-keep-the-lobster-industry-sustainable-and-profitable/37763972#
See the full video, here
]]>Maine history is filled with inventors. Chester Greenwood, as a chilly youth, invented earmuffs to keep his ears warm. Looking for a more hygienic way to clear between his teeth, Charles Forster came up with the idea of wooden toothpicks. Then, of course, there was the Maine Duck Boot, Leon Leonwood Bean’s solution to chronically wet and cold feet.
By: Melissa Waterman
Patrick Breeding and Amber Boutiette bring Maine entrepreneurship to the waterfront. Photo courtesy of Marin Skin Care.
Amber Boutiette, 27, and Patrick Breeding, 25, are modern-day inventors. Like earlier Mainers, the two University of Maine bio-medical engineering graduate students put their minds to solving a particular problem: dry, flakey and itchy skin. What is unusual, however, is the key ingredient they chose to use. Their new company, Marin Skincare, takes a protein found in lobster blood and incorporates it in a skin cream.
Boutiette has suffered from eczema, also known as atopic dermatitis, since she was a teenager. Eczema is a chronic disease affecting the immune system that causes painfully itchy, red skin. The origins of eczema are mysterious; the ailment can be triggered by anything from environmental factors to mental stress. “I had it severely,” Amber explained. “I tried steroids and all sorts of expensive creams. Eczema was a huge part of my life.”
Boutiette and Breeding were working with former Lobster Institute director Bob Bayer studying different ways to use lobster byproducts, specifically lobster hemolymph, the lobster’s circulatory fluid that functions like blood. The glycoproteins in the hemolymph system give lobsters a remarkable ability to fight off disease as well as help the animal regrow amputated limbs.
“We were doing cool things with it [the glycoprotein],” Breeding recalled. “We were finding many applications for it.” That fall Boutiette suffered a painful outbreak of eczema, which spread across her upper body and onto her face. Fellow students in her department convinced her to try the lobster protein in a solution to tamp down the discomfort. “After two days the eczema outbreak was gone. I used it for two months and it cleared completely,” Boutiette said.
Eczema is a common disease in the United States. The National Eczema Organization estimates that more than 31 million people have some form of the disease. Boutiette and Breeding recognized the value that the lobster’s glycoprotein might have to eczema sufferers and to others who have psoriasis and other skin ailments. Their aim: to create a skin cream that provides a protective barrier, hydrates the skin, and reduces inflammation.
Breeding brought both research and business development skills to the new venture. Earlier he had gone through the University of Maine’s “Innovate For Maine” program twice, which allowed him to work as an intern with creative Maine companies. He co-founded KinoTek, a sports performance company that uses motion capture and virtual reality tools to decrease risk of injury. Breeding and Boutiette also set up Zephyrus Simulation, a medical-device startup in Orono, while still in school.
“We didn’t know much about the cosmetics industry,” Breeding admitted. “We came to it from a science perspective.” The two worked with professional skin care and consumer testing laboratories in New York and New Jersey to test and finalize their product.
With grants from the Maine Technology Institute and the Libra Foundation, Boutiette and Breeding opened their company online in November, offering one product, a “soothing hydration cream” that combined lobster protein with shea butter, coconut oil, Vitamin E and other non-irritating ingredients. The product swiftly sold out in two months. “All the PR stories in the fall boosted demand wildly. Now we are trying to keep up and stay ahead of the demand,” Breeding said.
The lobster protein is collected at Luke’s Lobster’s processing facility in Saco. Now the plan is to increase the collection process at the facility and ramp up production this summer. “We have had so many mentors, it’s been great,” Breeding noted. “From CEI to Green Light Maine and Maine Sea Grant, we are very grateful for all the mentorship.”
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — A South Portland couple has launched a new skincare product, and lobster is the main ingredient.
A protein from the lobster that allows it to heal wounds and regenerate claws is the foundation for Marin Skincare’s hydration cream
“So we do a little bit of chemistry and take this out of the fluid and use it as our active ingredient,” founder Patrick Breeding said.
Breeding and his partner Amber Boutiette operate Marin Skincare from their home in South Portland.
As University of Maine graduate students, they researched ways to find more value in lobster by-products.
Boutiette suffered from severe eczema, but after testing a trial formula of their lobster lotion, within days she said her face began to clear.
“I was kind of patient zero with eczema for people trying it, so after it worked on my skin, we realized that this was something really incredible that we needed to share with other people,” Boutiette said.
With patents already applied for, they launched their product late last year.
They teamed up with Portland seafood company Luke’s Lobster where the fluid that contains the lobster protein is removed during processing. In the past, the fluid would have gone down the drain.
“We found a way to go in, sustainably collect it from lobsters that are going to become seafood anyway, so it becomes a value-added product for processors,” Breeding said.
Other ingredients in the cream include shea butter, coconut oil and vitamin E, but the ingredient from the lobster they tout for its healing properties is called a marine glycoprotein.
“I think that eventually it would have been stumbled upon because the properties that this has is unlike anything else that's on the market,” Boutiette said.
“You think about lobster processing and you think about the meat, some people are starting to use the shell. We use the circulatory fluid," Breeding said.
The actual tubes of lotion are processed outside of Maine, but everything else from the processing of the lobster, research and packaging happens in South Portland.
See the original post here: https://www.wmtw.com/article/maine-couple-creates-skincare-product-made-with-lobster/35926988
]]>PORTLAND, Maine (WABI) - A Maine skincare company was recently awarded a grant for developing a skin cream using a compound found in lobsters.
Marin Skincare won $14,000 through a pitch competition called Buoy Maine.
The competition was a part of the University of Maine’s Maine Sea Grant program.
The program fosters innovation and entrepreneurship to support Maine’s working waterfront and coastal communities.
Patrick Breeding and Amber Boutiette, who started Marin Skincare, use marine glycoproteins found in lobsters, as a key ingredient for their product that helps people with eczema, psoriasis and dry skin.”.
The couple says the grant will allow them to continue resourcing the compound.
”It’s going to allow us, and it has allowed us to have some funds to work with the lobster processors to get things off the ground. It’s also going to help us invest in inventory ahead of time. The more we can invest in inventory, the more we can essentially get ahead and accelerate our growth, which is critical. This grant is going to be super helpful in doing both of those things,” said Patrick Breeding, who co-founded Marin Skincare.
Marin Skincare works with Luke’s Lobster in Portland to resource the glycoprotein.
Breeding says the grant will also help in the companies efforts to develop more skincare products in the future.
You can only order Marin skin cream through the couple’s website, marinskincare.com
Copyright 2021 WABI. All rights reserved.
See the full video and original article: https://www.wabi.tv/2021/03/12/maine-skincare-company-receives-grant-for-developing-skin-cream-using-compound-found-in-lobsters/
]]>Marin Skincare is a Maine story.
It started in 2013 when co-founders Amber Boutiette and Patrick Breeding met on the first day of their first year as biomedical engineering undergraduate students at the University of Maine. Nearly eight years later, the pair has relocated to Portland, launched a specialty skincare product made with lobster glycoprotein, and is now teaming with an established Maine brand, Luke’s Lobster, to scale their supply chain and meet strong demand for their first product.
Luke’s Lobster, a seafood company founded by third-generation lobsterman Luke Holden, has been part of the Marin story from the beginning. The Luke’s Lobster ethos is focused on sustainable, traceable seafood that supports the coastal communities essential to its harvest. Boutiette and Breeding (’17, ’19G) were introduced to Holden by Robert Bayer, former director of the UMaine Lobster Institute. It was Bayer who discovered that lobster glycoprotein might have beneficial properties that could help treat Boutiette’s stubborn and painful eczema — and it did.
“I had eczema for most of my adult life and it progressively got worse over the years,” says Boutiette. “Having it on your face is debilitating because you can’t really use products that have steroids in them, and I had it really bad around my eyelids and on my cheeks. I tried every type of eczema cream, oils, diet changes, lifestyle changes, everything. Nothing helped.”
Nothing, that is, until Bayer, Boutiette and Breeding collaborated in 2017 on a prototype of the product that would later become Marin’s Soothing Hydration Cream.
“Within a day or two, I noticed a difference,” says Boutiette. “I first noticed my skin was not burning and itching as much. After about a week to two weeks, the spots had cleared, which was incredible after years of trying so many different products.”
While they had solved Boutiette’s pressing problem, this was not a eureka moment for the pair, who were gearing up for graduate school and preoccupied with another startup they had recently launched, Zephyrus Simulation.
“Amber’s eczema was gone, and we kind of forgot about it,” says Breeding.
Instead, Boutiette and Breeding were immersed in something of a crash course on entrepreneurship as part of a team trying to commercialize a cost-efficient, realistic simulator to train medical professionals in diagnosing and responding to critical respiratory situations. The technology was the basis of their senior capstone project, which had won the undergraduate Innovation Award at UMaine’s 2017 Student Symposium.
It was through Zephyrus that Boutiette and Breeding first were exposed to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in Maine. Recruited out of the Student Symposium and guided by the team at the Foster Center for Innovation, the two dove headfirst into the startup life and coursework in Innovation Engineering. Though Zephyrus eventually wound down, Breeding and Boutiette were hooked on the entrepreneurial mindset and increasingly focused on developing a product that they felt could change people’s lives.
“As we thought about life after grad school, we came back to this product that had helped Amber relieve her eczema,” says Breeding. “What better thing could we work on than this new solution to a really irritating and painful problem that affects over 10 percent of the population?”
When Boutiette and Breeding began building Marin and developing their first product, they went back to Holden to source their key ingredient. Lobster glycoprotein is a component of lobster circulatory fluid, a previously wasted byproduct of processing.
This past summer, Boutiette and Breeding spent hundreds of hours at Luke’s Lobster Seafood Co.’s processing facility in Saco collecting the glycoprotein in the quantities needed to manufacture Marin’s first batch of cream.
“In the beginning, it was a small thing. We would be super excited to get an amount that would fill a small coffee cup,” says Breeding. “I just kept showing up to collect it and built relationships with Luke and his employees and eventually systematized this whole collection process. We had some help over the summer, but it was really me doing a lot of the grunt work to gather enough to manufacture our first few thousand tubes.”
After launching in early October 2020, Marin sold out of their initial inventory inside of two months. Customers were clamoring for more of the cream, and the co-founders had to come up with a plan to scale — and fast.
Breeding and Boutiette took a step back and focused on systems, a familiar principle from their Innovation Engineering studies at UMaine.
“Everything works by a system or process,” says Breeding. “And, knowing that, there’s a system or a process for everything. So, if you don’t know how to do something, don’t know how to solve something, you only need to think about it from the fundamental principles of the steps in the process by which it works.”
There was no blueprint for how to scale up the collection of lobster glycoprotein, but Breeding had plenty of experience doing it himself, and a willing collaborator in Holden. Going forward, Luke’s Lobster employees will collect the glycoprotein as part of their processing operation, and Marin will purchase the raw material.
“Luke’s Lobster is consistently looking for innovative ways to find win-win solutions within the lobstering industry, from the moment lobsters are harvested to the finished products being created and marketed,” says Holden. “On the fishermen side, for example, we return bonuses to co-ops we work with when lobsters are handled exceptionally well so there is no waste in the supply chain. On the product side, we seek to use everything we can; whether that’s creating a plant fertilizer with lobster shells or a skin care product that truly helps people. Partnering with innovative companies like Marin is part of the overall equation that makes the lobster industry more robust and dynamic through a diversification of products. On a personal level, I enjoy working with entrepreneurs in Maine and helping them wherever I can.”
Breeding, a Connecticut native, and Boutiette, who grew up in Skowhegan, are both quick to credit Maine’s supportive and tight-knit entrepreneurial community, not to mention their crucial link to the lobster industry and enduring ties to their alma mater.
“In Maine, there’s this community of people that want you to succeed and will go out of their way to help you,” says Breeding. “It started at the Foster Center where we were gently pushed — pushed in the right direction, pushed to the right resource, pushed to the right thing we needed to learn. The support mechanisms in Maine for startups are unique and the focus on economic development makes it very nurturing.”
Initial funding for Marin came through the Maine Technology Institute and the Libra Future Fund, and the company recently won a $14,000 grant as part of Maine Sea Grant’s Buoy Maine pitch competition, which is focused on strengthening coastal/marine seafood and tourism related industries.
“I feel that we really will help Maine’s economy,” says Breeding. “In the beginning, it was theoretical, but now we’re actually paying Luke’s for raw material. We’re paying a processor for this protein before the lobster is even sold. That adds value to the lobster industry — it helps buoy the processors, which helps buoy the fisherman. As we’ve progressed, we’ve become more connected to that story because the impact has become real.”
For Boutiette and Breeding, gratitude has defined their journey to this point. Now fully restocked with a solid plan for the future, they are grateful for the support they’ve received from all corners of the state, grateful to be selling a product that can be a game changer for people with troubled skin, and grateful for an opportunity to add value to Maine’s most iconic fishery.
“It is the most incredible thing to be able to develop something that can help people with the same problem I had,” says Boutiette. “I feel so lucky to have been able to try it in the first place, to help myself, but I feel a million times luckier to be able to help others and bring relief from that heavy of a problem.”
Written by: Ashley Forbes, University of Maine, ashley.forbes@maine.edu
See the original article: https://umaine.edu/news/blog/2021/03/11/black-bear-to-marin-skincare-alumni-founders-adding-value-to-maines-lobster-industry/
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Our friends over at the Maine Campus, the University of Maine's Student Magazine, wrote up a great story about the launch of Marin!
Check out the full writeup by Madeline, here - https://mainecampus.com/2020/12/umaine-alumni-launch-skincare-line-derived-from-maine-lobster-byproducts/
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[Watch the full video here - https://www.wabi.tv/2020/11/23/umaine-grads-marketing-lobster-based-skin-creme/]
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“We had never really thought about skincare much.”
Patrick Breeding and Amber Boutiette met their freshman year at the University of Maine in Orono. While there, the two Biomedical Engineer majors starting working with Dr. Bob Bayer at the Maine Lobster Institute.
“I refer to them as my academic children,” says the director, smiling.
The three became involved in research surrounding a type of protein found in lobsters.
“It’s an extract from the circulatory fluid of the lobster,” explains Bayer. “It’s a lot like our hemoglobin except that it’s copper based and it has some unique properties.”
Among them, protecting and renewing the lobster’s tissue.
The couple wondered - could this sea skin serum work on humans?
Boutiette suffers from eczema, a painful and recurring condition that causes her skin to become red, itchy and inflamed.
“You get to a point with eczema where it’s pretty severe,” says Boutiette, “and a lot of the products out there are either steroids which can do more harm than good or just drug store moisturizers which really don’t do anything.”
“We kind of literally figured, why not,” adds Breeding. “What could be worse than the 1,002nd thing not working that we’ve already tried.”
“We kind of literally figured, why not. What could be worse than the 1,002nd thing not working that we’ve already tried.”
Patrick Breeding, Co-Founder, Marin Skincare
The next time Boutiette experienced a flare up, she applied the lobster liniment.
“And within days, my spots started clearing up.,” she says. “And about two weeks in, it was completely cleared. it was literally the first time that anything had worked for me.”
Boutiette and Breeding went on to graduate school at UMaine. Midway through, they had a sort of epiphany.
“We kind of thought back to- ok, well hold on,” says Breeding. “We literally scratched our own itch and solved such an important problem for ourselves, let’s take what that was doing and bring it to other people.”
“What better to do through something that literally changed my life,” adds Boutiette.,
The couple spent the next year and a half developing a lobster protein based skin cream. They teamed up with Luke’s Lobster in Portland to sustainably extract their key ingredient.
“We’re essentially milking the lobster before they become seafood,” says Breeding.
In October, Marin Skincare launched online.
“We made our first $1,000 in that first day very, very quickly,” says Breeding. “And we’ve been filling hundreds of orders over the past month.”
The couple hopes their crustacean-based cream will go global. Dr. Bayer sees even greater possibilities for a precious protein that would otherwise go to waste.
“We could probably collect several million pounds of this material from the processing facilities in Maine and Canada,” he says.”
Read the original article here - https://www.wabi.tv/2020/11/23/umaine-grads-marketing-lobster-based-skin-creme/
By Joy Hollowell
Published: Nov. 23, 2020 at 4:01 PM EST
SOUTH PORTLAND, Maine — Recent University of Maine graduates Amber Boutiette and Patrick Breeding have been hard at work during the pandemic launching their first skin cream called Marin.
Marin, which means star of the sea, is unlike any other skin cream in at least one way; the bioengineering graduates are using a glycoprotein from lobsters as the key ingredient.
It all started when the pair were getting their masters degrees in bioengineering at UMaine and were working with lobster scientists to find value-added applications for lobster byproducts, the parts that get thrown away. Breeding explains that the glycoprotein found in lobster is responsible for its ability to fight off disease, heal wounds and protect internal tissue.
The research came at the perfect time. Boutiette, who is not only a business partner with Breeding but a girlfriend as well, was battling eczema with rashes on her face and eyes. With the help from the researchers they were working with at the Lobster Institute in Orono, the couple made a cream and Boutiette started applying it to her face.
"After about three days my skin started to clear up. In about two weeks my flare-ups were completely gone," explained Boutiette. When the pair realized they had stumbled on something that could help people, they began working on their business with an eye toward helping others with the same problem.
"[Eczema] is so much more than a rash. It's not a vanity problem. It's painful and distracting and itchy and flaky and, for some people, it's just extremely debilitating," explained Boutiette who has dealt with the chronic skin condition that affects 35 million Americans.
Boutiette says the solutions for eczema are not great: either prescribed steroids that can damage the skin over time or drugstore creams which often are not effective.
The couple has been partnering with Luke's Lobster in Saco, which is where they get the glycoprotein from the lobster before it becomes seafood. They say that the lobsters do not feel anything when they extract what has become their cream's key ingredient in their cream. The cream is then manufactured at a cosmetic facility in New Jersey.
The cream has a shortlist of ingredients all of which, Breeding says, are used with a purpose and without any fillers or parabens. While the idea of lobster cream may be off-putting to some, it has no fragrance.
"We had so many hiccups in COVID. We wasted hundreds of hours of time, tens of thousands of dollars to get to market. That was very very difficult," said Breeding, but the hard work is paying off. They currently are growing out of their home office in South Portland and are ready to start hiring their first employees.
While they currently only offer one product, they are working to develop more but want to do so with purposeful intent. So far the clinically tested cream is being received well by customers, many of whom are seeing the same benefit that Boutiette experienced, alleviating their eczema.
Both from New England, the couple say they plan to stay and grow their business in Maine, and they think their cream could help the state's number one export.
"We could literally add dollars to each lobster going through processor if we were doing this to scale which could be a huge boost in revenue from a completely different revenue stream from a completely different industry for the lobster industry," said Breeding.
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[See the entire video here - https://www.necn.com/news/local/maine-startup-hopes-people-shell-out-for-its-lobster-based-skin-cream/2351400/]
Marin is the creation of Patrick Breeding and Amber Boutiette, a couple both in business and for the past seven years in life, who met at the University of Maine at Orono.
Biomedical engineers with graduate degrees, Breeding and Boutiette have been experimenting with a protein found throughout lobsters’ bodies that they’ve incorporated with lotion-making materials to make a skin moisturizer.
Their first lotion went on sale on Oct. 5 on their online shop, after months of research, looking at scientific literature and a very personal experiment.
Friday is National Lobster Day and, wouldn't you know it? Maine is celebrating!
“You get to a point where you’re desperate enough to try anything to get some relief,” said Boutiette, who suffered from eczema and had it all over her upper body, face and eyelids.
“One day we formulated [the lobster protein] into a cream and put it on my face and two weeks later my skin was completely clear,” she explained.
Eventually, after input and assistance from cosmetic industry chemists and professionals, the pair settled on a formula for Marin and began working on a plan for their business.
They’ve found a workspace at the New England Ocean Cluster, a collaborative of businesses and organizations focused on the ocean and the “blue economy” in Portland.
Boutiette and Breeding have also found a reliable source for lobster glycoprotein. Luke’s Lobster, the seafood company with a processing facility in Saco, Maine, is allowing Marin to extract the protein using a special process between the time the lobsters are stunned at the plant and the time they are processed for consumption.
“We have a vacuum system to take it out,” said Boutiette, adding that the lobsters “couldn’t even feel it” and if they weren’t going to be eaten they could be thrown back in the water and survive.
“This ingredient that we’re taking is completely going to waste,” Breeding said.
A new study from a Maine laboratory has found that microplastics in the sea can impact the growth of lobsters.
As for their near and long-term plans, Breed and Boutiette say they’re committed to making Marin a success.
Originally, they weren’t sure how attached they would be to their startup, but after seeing their initial success getting a product to launch and receiving feedback, the pair says they’d like to see Marin through and someday make it “a national skincare brand.”
“Since we’ve launched, we’ve definitely seen our sales climbing, were definitely growing,” Boutiette said.
“We love getting hand-written notes from people, we love actually doing the work,” Breeding said.
“We originally thought we’d scale and exit but now we’ll have to see,” he added.
Read the original article here - https://www.necn.com/news/local/maine-startup-hopes-people-shell-out-for-its-lobster-based-skin-cream/2351400/
By Dustin Wlodkowski • Published November 16, 2020 • Updated on November 16, 2020 at 7:33 pm
]]>The company, Marin Skincare, uses a protein from lobster hemolymph — a circulatory fluid that functions like blood — as the active ingredient in its hydration cream, which it says can soothe skin irritated by eczema, dermatitis, psoriasis and other ailments.
The product is the latest item whose genesis can be traced to efforts at UMaine to find commercial applications for byproducts of Maine’s commercial lobster industry.
Over the years, researchers with UMaine’s Lobster Institute have sought to find ways to boost the value of Maine’s $485 million lobster fishery by finding uses for lobster shells and other byproducts that seafood processors discard. Other lobster-based products that have shown potential over the years (but have not necessarily made it to market) include dog biscuits, golf balls and another kind of skin cream aimed at treating viruses.
Marin Skincare’s lotion was not developed at UMaine but by two former UMaine graduate students who, while earning their master’s degrees, learned about the potential for non-seafood, lobster-based products from Bob Bayer, a UMaine professor and the former head of the Lobster Institute.
CEO Patrick Breeding and co-founder Amber Boutiette have spent countless hours over the past year or so establishing the company and developing the product, often testing it out on Boutiette’s eczema, Breeding said. Grants totaling $30,000 from the Maine Technology Institute and the Portland-based Libra Foundation helped the company get off the ground.
Based in South Portland, Marin Skincare now is working with Luke’s Lobster to collect hemolymph at the seafood firm’s processing plant in Saco, Breeding said.
Breeding and Boutiette process proteins from the hemolymph to develop the active ingredient in Maine, and then drive it to a processing facility in New Jersey, where it is blended with shea butter, coconut oil, Vitamin E and other ingredients, and then packaged for sale.
Marin Skincare’s Soothing Hydration Cream went on the market in early October. As of Friday, Breeding said, it had been on the market 38 days.
“I’m not counting or anything,” he said, poking fun at his own enthusiasm.
Breeding said the cream has been clinically tested and has been approved for retail sale. He said there are other cosmetic skincare products made with naturally occurring proteins found in plants and animals, but that Marin Skincare’s cream is the only product made with lobster hemocyanin, the active protein in lobster hemolymph.
“It’s pretty rare that [researchers] find a new ingredient” to use in cosmetic products, he said. “We know that this works.”
The company primarily sells the cream through its website, but has been getting inquiries from spas that want to offer the cream to their customers, Breeding said. It also is exploring opportunities to sell the cream through a few small retailers in Portland.
Breeding said he and Boutiette hope to develop other products that will catch on in the cosmetics industry. When it comes to skin care, there are a variety of products designed to treat common ailments, he said, and others meant to maintain good skin conditions.
“We’re developing them right now,” Breeding said about products the small company hopes to bring to market next. “But we’re not going to reveal what they are yet.”
Read the original article here - https://bangordailynews.com/2020/11/16/business/umaine-grads-develop-cream-from-lobster-fluid-to-treat-dry-skin/
Bangor Daily News, Bill Trotter, November 16, 2020
]]>Great story on Marin by Laurie Schreiber at Mainebiz!
Read the full article, here - https://www.mainebiz.biz/article/skin-care-startup-looks-to-a-familiar-maine-source-for-ingredient-lobster
For Immediate Release – October 12, 2020
Media Contact: Patrick Breeding, patrick@marinskincare.com
Portland, Maine - Two recent University of Maine biomedical engineering graduates, Amber Boutiette and Patrick Breeding, launched Marin Skincare, a skincare startup using a glycoprotein found in lobster as the key ingredient in products for people with eczema, dermatitis, or generally dry, aggravated skin.
The idea for the company and the product was inspired by a very personal need: Amber had struggled for years to find a solution for her own eczema. While working towards his degree in Biomedical Engineering at the University of Maine, Patrick was involved in finding new biotech applications for sustainable marine resources. Working with some of Maine’s most experienced marine resource industry experts, he discovered the surprising properties of glycoproteins found in lobster for use on the skin. These naturally abundant glycoproteins help repair and protect the lobster outer barrier and inner tissue from physical and environmental stressors, while playing a critical role in balancing the internal health of the lobster. When applied to our skin, they help protect the skin’s barrier, while locking-in hydration and minimizing skin moisture loss, which happens when skin is damaged from issues such as eczema.
From that initial discovery, it was a short entrepreneurial leap to begin the work of developing a skincare product that would calm Amber’s eczema flare-ups.
“It was amazing to discover this new ingredient, it’s sustainably-sourced and naturally active. Our third ¬party lab studies demonstrated this product is safe and non-irritating, a critical feature for people with sensitive, temperamental skin,” said Breeding.
The team paired up with industry renowned skincare chemists and manufacturers to develop their first product, spending months to perfect the formula to ensure it not only worked, but felt soothing going onto skin. After perfecting the formula, the pair needed to find a sustainable source of lobster glycoprotein. Patrick had heard of Luke’s Lobster and gave Luke Holden, its Founder and CEO, a call. Immediately, Luke and Patrick were collaborating to develop a method of sustainably and ethically collecting the glycoprotein.
“We were more than happy to work with Marin Skincare on developing this product,” said Luke Holden, CEO & Founder of Luke’s Lobster. “This type of collaboration fits right into our mission to use every part of the lobster, which has an array of sustainable uses, and remarkable properties, in addition to being delicious to eat.”
After developing a new supply chain for the glycoprotein, completing product testing and manufacturing, they were able to launch their first product this past week. Termed ‘Soothing Hydration Cream’, the cream blends their marine glycoproteins with skin hydrating and protecting ingredients (including hyaluronic acid, squalane, shea butter, coconut oil and Vitamin E) and is now available on their website www.marinskincare.com.
“I’ve gone through countless steroid creams that only made my skin angrier, and we’ve finally found a way to keep it at bay. After years of suffering with dry, irritated skin, we made it our mission to bring this relief to others”, said Boutiette.
The team is excited to continue to release products to help address dry, aggravated skin. You can follow the company on Instagram at @MarinSkincareUS and on Facebook at @Marin Skincare.
In this podcast, Patrick sat down with Kate Dickerson of the Maine Science Festival, to talk about the story of Marin, and his passion for doing 'cool stuff that matters'.
Thanks for having us, MSF!
Listen to the full podcast, here - https://mainesciencefestival.org/essential_grid/episode-1-patrick-breeding/
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Two recent graduates of the University of Maine’s biomedical engineering graduate program have launched a skincare company and unique flagship product, Marin Skincare, which blends lobster glycoproteins with other ingredients to treat dry skin conditions commonly associated with eczema.
Amber Boutiette and Patrick Breeding co-founded a company called Dermarus in August 2019. Marin Skincare is its first brand.
The product was a result of Boutiette’s own struggles with eczema. She found the lobster glycoproteins calmed her eczema unlike other products she had tried. Glycoproteins help maintain the skin’s barrier while hydrating skin, according to the company.
“Our marine glycoproteins were the only thing that worked for me. After years of suffering with dry, irritated skin we made it our mission to bring this relief to others,” said Boutiette, who serves as the company’s chief product officer.
Marin Skincare’s flagship product, which is a “soothing hydration” cream product, blends lobster glycoproteins with skin hydrating and protecting ingredients, including hyaluronic acid, squalene, shea butter, coconut oil and Vitamin E, and is free from skin irritants including fragrances and parabens.
Patrick Breeding, who serves as CEO, said the company plans to introduce more skincare products, but that its R&D efforts have also revealed applications of the glycoproteins that would be the basis for other brands outside skincare.
Breeding and Boutiette spun Dermarus out of an existing company called Lobster Unlimited, which was founded in 2013 to develop new ways to recycle the waste from lobster processing and render it into commercially viable products. Lobster Unlimited has a small equity stake in Dermarus, Breeding said, but the latter developed its own intellectual property to launch Marin Skincare as its first product brand.
While Dermarus is focused on applying the glycoprotein for skin hydrating, barrier protecting and inflammatory properties, Lobster Unlimited is focused on anti-viral and cancer applications, Breeding told Maine Startups Insider.
Dermarus has partnered with Luke’s Lobster/Cape Seafood to ethically and sustainably collect the proteins from lobster, Breeding said.
“It was amazing to discover this new ingredient, it’s sustainably-sourced and naturally active,” said Breeding. “We made sure to have third-party studies performed to show this product is safe and non-irritating, which is really important to people with sensitive, temperamental skin.
To jump start their business amidst the turbulence of COVID-19, Boutiette and Breeding brought on an investor and co-founding COO, Jeremy Boutot, who they met through participating in the Maine Center for Entrepreneurs’ Top Gun program, though for ventures other than Dermarus (Breeding is also a co-founder of KinoTek, another promising startup founded by recent UMaine graduates).
Dermarus has also received $30,000 in grant funding from the Maine Technology Institute and Libra Foundation.
Read the original article here - https://mainestartupsinsider.com/startup-launches-skincare-brand-using-lobster-glycoprotein/
July 27, 2020 - Maine Startups Insider - Whit Richardson
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