SkinBioTherapeutics PLC

By Financial Journalist: Elric Langton | 23 August 2026

Mike, Alex, and I all have a financial interest in SkinBioTherapeutics.

There are probably more sensible things to be doing in the small hours of a Sunday morning than arguing with Anthropic and Grok AI about postbiotic lysates, patent claims and cosmetic textiles.

But here we are. It was fun and lasted quite a while. I opted not to cut this short because, one, I know many of you enjoy a long read, and two, there are many avenues to explore, all of which are important and therefore worth exploring. So, grab a double Espresso.

Those who have followed my research for any length of time will know that I quite enjoy developing a hypothesis. What I enjoy rather less — although it is considerably more useful — is trying to destroy it. AI is very good at playing the Devil’s Advocate, which is useful and less painful than chatting to PJ/Mike Caine.

So, having spent several months speculating that Zenakine could eventually find its way into textiles, I decided not to ask AI to prove me right.

I asked it to play Devil’s Advocate.

Find the holes. Challenge the assumptions. Tell me why the interpretation might be wrong. Look for competing explanations. Separate what the documents actually say from what an enthusiastic shareholder might like them to say.

It matters enormously for SkinBioTherapeutics.

SkinBioTherapeutics shareholders have endured enough speculation masquerading as fact over the years. We do not need to manufacture certainty where none exists.

What we can do is examine newly available evidence/patents, compare them with the existing IP estate and the Croda agreement, and assess whether our previous hypothesis has become more or less credible.

And in this case, I think it has become considerably more credible.

Not proven.

But considerably more interesting.

The patent that prompted the questions

A recently published international patent application, WO2026162532, filed by Croda’s Sederma division and published on 6 August 2026, has understandably attracted attention among SkinBioTherapeutics shareholders.

At first glance, there are two obvious questions.

Is Sederma developing something new around the SkinBiotix technology?

And, perhaps more importantly:

Does this strengthen SkinBioTherapeutics’ commercial position with Croda, or somehow weaken it?

Having worked through the specification and compared it with what we know about SkinBioTherapeutics’ existing patent estate and the November 2019 Croda relationship, my interpretation is firmly in favour of the former.

What appears to be confirmed

The patent concerns a new neurocosmetic use involving wellbeing, sleep, circadian regulation and antagonism of cortisol effects using a postbiotic lysate derived from:

Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus GG.

That is important because the strain deposit identified is ATCC 53103.

Those who have followed the SkinBiotix story closely will recognise that immediately. It is the same bacterial strain associated with the technology underpinning Zenakine.

The apparent change from Lactobacillus rhamnosus to Lacticaseibacillus rhamnosus does not indicate a different organism. It reflects the relatively recent scientific reclassification of the genus.

Same strain.

Same deposit number.

Same underlying LGG biology.

And, importantly, the commercial Zenakine active remains described through the INCI:

Lactobacillus Ferment Lysate - The Scientific Name

That leads to what I regard as the first important conclusion.

This does not appear to be Sederma constructing some competing platform around SkinBioTherapeutics.

It looks much more like Sederma developing additional uses for the active it already licenses.

That is a very different proposition.

A Zenakine patent? Not quite

There is a little nomenclature housekeeping worth doing here because accuracy matters.

I would not describe WO2026162532 simply as a “Zenakine patent”, as some investors have suggested.

Zenakine is Croda/Sederma’s commercial brand for the active. The patent itself covers the LGG-derived postbiotic and its various applications.

A more accurate description would therefore be:

A Sederma neurocosmetic-use patent application built around the active, commercially embodied as Zenakine.

It is an inelegant sentence.

But scientifically and legally, it is considerably safer.

And that caution runs throughout this analysis.

Why I find the filing commercially constructive

Patent applications do not prove commercial success.

They do not tell us how many kilos of Zenakine Croda are being sold.

They do not tell us whether L’Oréal, Estée Lauder, Unilever or anybody else is preparing a launch, although the previously disgraced CEO has named all of them to me, and I dare say, anyone on his list of preferred suckers.

And they certainly do not provide us with a royalty forecast. I know, we can dream, right?

However, companies generally do not undertake extensive mechanistic work, human clinical studies, or international patent filings on an ingredient in which they have completely lost interest.

That does not guarantee commercial adoption.

But it does tell us something.

Sederma continues to invest intellectual and financial capital in broadening what this active can claim to do.

For SkinBioTherapeutics shareholders, that matters because the bear argument is simply crickets as far as Zenakine is concerned, and therefore a flop. Like me, they ignore the sensitive steps of adopting a new active ingredient into new or existing formulations, and shelf-life tests that secure the global brand, which is why we have seen small, nimble independents move first. They don’t have a global brand to protect.

From barrier repair to neurocosmetics

When SkinBiotix was first discussed publicly, much of the investment proposition centred on the relatively straightforward concept of improving the skin barrier.

That alone was interesting.

But Zenakine has since migrated into something significantly broader.

Croda is positioning the ingredient around concepts including:

• emotional wellbeing;

• stress ageing;

• sleep;

• skin recovery;

• neurocosmetics;

• face and neck applications;

• eye contour applications; and

• scalp treatments.

The new patent application appears to further deepen that IP envelope. And this is where the commercial logic becomes very interesting.

SkinBioTherapeutics does not necessarily need dozens of fundamentally different active ingredients.

If one active can acquire multiple commercially valuable claims, it becomes useful across a much larger number of finished products.

That potentially increases the addressable market without fundamentally changing the ingredient being sold.

The active is stable. The shop window is widening.

This is probably the simplest way I can describe what appears to be happening.

I can find no persuasive evidence that Zenakine itself has somehow been reformulated into a new active.

Its INCI remains:

Lactobacillus Ferment Lysate (and) Glycerin (and) Pentylene Glycol (and) Propanediol (and) Xanthan Gum.

What is changing is the number of ways Croda demonstrates how customers might use it. A clear signal that only the bears will ignore is the importance Zenakine has become to Croda/Sederma.

We have seen Zenakine showcased in concepts including a night cream, a reviving cream, a sleeping mask, and, particularly interestingly, a harmonising mist.

That last format caught my attention some time ago. It resulted in long, drawn-out discussions with our Croda friend, Dave.

Why?

Once you establish that an active can be delivered as a mist or spray rather than merely as a cream applied from a pot, your imagination naturally starts moving towards other delivery mechanisms.

Which brings us to textiles.

My Sunday morning vindication — with a large asterisk

I confess to taking a little satisfaction from this one.

For several months, I have been speculating that Zenakine could eventually be incorporated into textiles.

Not because I had been told it would happen.

I hadn’t.

And not because there was some secret customer launch sitting in my inbox.

There wasn’t.

It was simply a hypothesis built from the available evidence.

We knew Zenakine could be delivered through a mist.

We knew the neurocosmetic proposition lends itself to prolonged skin contact and well-being.

We knew hospitality was an obvious environment where sleep, relaxation, skin contact, and premium experiential products intersect.

And I was also aware of an interesting precedent involving a previous Company associated with an interim CEO in this ecosystem, where textile-related applications later achieved some success.

Yeah, I know… that did not prove anything. But it made the hypothesis worth keeping in the notebook.

Then along comes the Sederma patent, Mol on LSE, discovered. So, a big thanks to him for keeping me up all morning, not forgetting Anthropic and Grok.

And buried within that very broad specification is explicit consideration of cosmetotextiles. Oh, you beauty!

The active may be incorporated into woven or nonwoven material, including clothing and other materials intended to come into contact with the skin.

Well now.

That certainly got my attention.

Because we have moved from:

“I wonder whether this could work in textiles?”

to:

“Sederma itself has contemplated textile delivery within its patent strategy.”

That is not commercial confirmation.

But it is quite a meaningful progression.

Hotel sheets, pillows and sleep masks?

Oh, and OMG … thanks to Toyin. See the prices! Is this where skincare is going? Apparently!

This is where we need to resist becoming carried away. The patent does not tell us that Marriott is about to launch Zenakine bedding.

It does not identify a hotel customer. It does not tell us that Croda has signed a textile manufacturer.

And it does not mean every theoretical embodiment listed in a patent will ever see commercial daylight.

Patent specifications are deliberately broad.

You know I like caveats, right!

Nevertheless, once you combine:

sleep + wellbeing + topical delivery + textiles + prolonged skin contact

It does not require too heroic an imagination to see why hospitality could eventually be interesting.

Pillowcases.

Sleep masks.

Bedding.

Spa textiles.

Garments worn against the skin.

Potentially even premium hotel concepts built around rest and recovery.

Again, none of those should presently find their way into anybody’s revenue model.

But neither should we pretend the patent hasn’t made the earlier hypothesis more credible.

It clearly has.

And now we arrive at the more important question

What does this mean for SkinBioTherapeutics’ existing relationship with Croda?

This is where my Devil’s Advocate exercise became particularly useful.

The tempting bullish interpretation is straightforward:

Croda develops more uses → Croda sells more Zenakine → SkinBioTherapeutics receives more royalties.

And broadly, I think that is reasonable.

But there is a complication. Of course there is!

The 2019 commercial agreement granted Croda exclusivity in the relevant cosmetic field, while SkinBioTherapeutics retained other sectors, including medical, pharmaceutical, and food-supplement applications.

Further application areas were also contemplated through additional commercial agreements with tiered royalty structures.

The problem for those of us sitting outside the boardroom is that the full agreement isn’t public.

We therefore do not know every field-of-use definition.

And that means we should be very careful before declaring that any particular textile application categorically belongs to Croda or categorically belongs to SkinBioTherapeutics.

A textile does not automatically become therapeutic

This is perhaps the most important conceptual point. The physical format does not necessarily determine the commercial field.

Put Zenakine into a cream, and it can be cosmetic.

Put it into a mist, and it can still be cosmetic.

And put it into a textile, and — depending on the claims being made — it can still be cosmetic.

Imagine a pillowcase marketed to support the appearance of rested skin or to reduce the visible effects of environmental stress.

That is a very different proposition from a textile intended to treat psoriasis or eczema, assist wound healing or prevent infection.

Same broad delivery medium. Completely different commercial and potentially regulatory purpose.

Therefore, my present working hypothesis is:

Cosmetic textile applications could plausibly sit within Croda’s cosmetic field, while genuinely therapeutic, medical-device or veterinary applications could sit within areas retained by SkinBioTherapeutics.

Could. Not definitely do. It’s a hypothesis.

Is Sederma somehow disintermediating SkinBioTherapeutics?

This is another obvious bear argument raised by PJ. A reasonable query.

Sederma is the named applicant. SkinBioTherapeutics isn’t.

Therefore, the sceptic might argue that Sederma is building its own IP around the active, thereby progressively reducing SkinBioTherapeutics’ importance.

I do not find that interpretation particularly persuasive. But, PJ, being PJ, he does like to step outside the box and look at the negative possibilities, which is no bad exercise.

There is nothing unusual about a licensee developing improvement patents or new-use patents around technology it has licensed.

In fact, one could argue the opposite.

Why invest considerable R&D resources developing new applications for something you intend to abandon?

SkinBioTherapeutics retains its own patent estate around the LGG lysate technology.

Sederma’s patent seeks protection for particular downstream applications.

Those rights can coexist.

Indeed, that is quite normal.

What I would not do is make the sweeping statement that SkinBioTherapeutics “owns LGG” or that every conceivable Sederma claim must necessarily depend upon a SkinBioTherapeutics patent.

Patent rights are territorial.

Claims differ.

Families have different expiry dates.

And the precise interaction can become extremely technical.

For investment purposes, however, the broader point is simpler.

Nothing in this filing suggests that Sederma has somehow invented Zenakine away from SkinBioTherapeutics.

That said, I don’t buy into the name change from SkinBiotix to Zenakine. That, IMHO, was a pure distancing play away from a minnow to Croda for marketing.

It appears to be building a larger commercial moat around an active arising from the relationship.

Trigger Warning - More uses could mean more royalties

This is where shareholders should perhaps focus.

If the same licensed active can be sold into:

• Night skincare;

• Sleep products;

• Stress-related skincare;

• Scalp formulations;

• Facial care;

• Eye care;

• Mists;

• Masks; and potentially

• Cosmetotextiles,

Then the commercial opportunity is considerably wider than if Zenakine had remained a narrowly positioned barrier-repair ingredient.

And assuming those applications fall within the existing royalty-bearing structure, more premium, differentiated products containing Zenakine should ultimately be royalty-accretive for SkinBioTherapeutics.

The important word there is assuming.

Until we see the underlying licence, nobody outside the Company can state precisely how every novel application is treated commercially.

The intriguing SkinBioTherapeutics opportunity outside Croda

There is another side to this story, which I think could become more interesting over time.

SkinBioTherapeutics did not sell the entire platform to Croda.

It licensed a field. Other sectors remained with SkinBioTherapeutics.

Historically, conceptually interesting but commercially less useful because SkinBioTherapeutics itself had limited manufacturing infrastructure.

That changed with the acquisition of Bio-Tech Solutions Limited.

BTS manufactures health, hygiene, and personal care products for human and animal health.

It already serves channels including medical customers and veterinary distribution.

Suddenly, SkinBioTherapeutics retaining medical, therapeutic or veterinary uses of its platform becomes more than an abstract sentence buried inside an old RNS.

It potentially has an execution vehicle.

Manufacturing.

Formulation support.

Packaging.

Existing industry relationships.

Routes into medical and veterinary markets.

That does not mean SkinBioTherapeutics is secretly developing Zenakine wound dressings.

I want to make that absolutely clear.

But strategically, the pieces are more interesting today than they were in 2019.

Could BTS eventually become part of the platform strategy?

This is where the imagination starts running again.

Suppose SkinBioTherapeutics identified a retained-field application for its lysate technology.

Perhaps wound care.

Perhaps dermatology.

Perhaps veterinary skin health.

Perhaps another topical medical application.

Before owning BTS, SkinBioTherapeutics would have needed to find an external manufacturing partner and then begin constructing a commercial supply chain.

Today, it owns a business already operating within relevant markets.

That potentially shortens the distance between:

IP → product concept → manufacturing → customer.

Again, this is optionality.

Not guidance.

Not forecast revenue.

Not a disclosed development programme.

But optionality still has value when assessing what management might eventually do with the assets it now owns.

The Devil’s Advocate case

It is worth assembling the bear argument properly.

Perhaps the patent is mainly defensive.

Perhaps most of the broad embodiments never become products.

Perhaps cosmetotextiles ultimately generate negligible demand.

Perhaps Zenakine remains a relatively modest niche ingredient.

Perhaps the royalty economics are less attractive than shareholders hope.

Perhaps Croda’s customers take years to launch products.

Perhaps the NDA continues to prevent investors from understanding whether any of this is financially material.

Every one of those possibilities is legitimate.

And that is precisely why I would not attempt to place a value on the textile opportunity today.

There is nowhere near enough evidence.

But that does not mean the patent is meaningless.

The mistake investors often make is believing evidence must either prove the entire bull case or be irrelevant. Markets do not work like that.

Investment theses develop incrementally. In our case, seven long years.

One piece of evidence changes a probability.

Then another.

Then another.

Eventually, the commercial numbers settle the argument.

We are not there yet.

We thought we were until, well, let’s skip this part, it’s been done.

Patent duration requires care

There is also a particularly technical issue worth mentioning.

Different SkinBioTherapeutics patent families have different priority dates and different claim scopes.

Some protection extends far beyond what investors might assume.

Likewise, any eventual Sederma patent arising from this application could carry its own term extending well into the future.

The interaction between those rights will depend upon jurisdiction, granted claims and the underlying commercial licence.

Therefore, I would resist simplistic claims that Croda will one day somehow “own” the applications once a SkinBioTherapeutics patent expires.

Patent estates are rarely that neat.

And we are talking about something that is many years away.

There are rather more immediate things for shareholders to worry about.

Like royalties.

What would I actually like to see now?

The patent is intellectually interesting.

But SkinBioTherapeutics investors need commercial information.

We need greater visibility regarding the Zenakine royalty trajectory.

We need evidence of customer launches.

We need clarity on whether additional application areas have triggered further agreements under the original Croda structure.

And eventually, we need a way to determine whether Zenakine is becoming financially material.

The NDA has made reverse-engineering the economics extraordinarily difficult.

That may have been tolerable during development.

It becomes increasingly problematic once commercialisation begins.

Investors cannot indefinitely value something by counting formulation brochures and searching patent databases at ridiculous hours on Sunday mornings.

Entertaining, though that may be.

So what has actually changed?

For me, the significance of WO2026162532 isn’t that it suddenly transforms the SkinBioTherapeutics valuation.

It doesn’t.

It doesn’t add £20 million to my spreadsheet.

It doesn’t tell us royalties will explode.

And it certainly doesn’t justify pretending a hotel-textile business already exists.

What it does is add another piece of evidence to the direction of travel.

Croda/Sederma appears to continue investing in science. They clearly see value.

The claim envelope is widening.

The neurocosmetic positioning is deepening.

The range of potential delivery mechanisms is broadening.

And, rather pleasingly for someone who has been banging on about textiles for several months, cosmetotextiles are now explicitly sitting inside Sederma’s own patent thinking.

I will take that small victory.

But only the small one.

The larger victory comes when we see the royalties.

The bottom line FWIW

My interpretation is that this filing is constructive rather than dilutive for SkinBioTherapeutics.

It appears less like Sederma is building around SkinBioTherapeutics and more like Sederma is building on technology already within their commercial relationship.

That matters. Only a fool will argue otherwise.

The real commercial opportunity may not be one spectacular product but rather the gradual proliferation of the same active across an increasing number of premium applications.

Creams.

Masks.

Mists.

Scalp products.

Sleep-related skincare.

And perhaps, eventually, textiles.

The active remains broadly the same.

The shop window keeps getting bigger.

For shareholders, however, the discipline must remain equally consistent.

A patent is evidence of R&D commitment.

It is not evidence of material revenue.

A formulation concept demonstrates technical possibility.

It is not a customer order.

A textile claim expands potential applications.

It is not a hotel contract.

And strategic optionality through BTS is interesting.

It is not yet a commercial programme.

That is the way I prefer to look at these things.

Develop the hypothesis.

Search for evidence.

Then ask the Devil’s Advocate to try to wreck it.

If the argument is still standing afterwards, perhaps it deserves a little more attention.

This one is still standing.

If you haven’t had enough already. You can explore some of the AI chat here.

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