NASA Found an Organism on the Outside of the Space Station. He Turned It Into a Skincare Line.

Dr. Kyle Landry holds a Ph.D. in Food Science from UMass Amherst, and did his postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School under longevity scientist Dr. David Sinclair — which is not the background you’d expect for someone who ended up co-founding a skincare company, until you hear where the core ingredient came from.

Working with NASA and the Jet Propulsion Lab, Landry and Sinclair’s team identified an extremophile organism that had spent 18 months mounted on the exterior of the International Space Station and survived — a level of radiation and temperature extremes that destroys almost anything else. What started as a government and biosecurity research project became a patented ingredient called Bacillus Lysate.

Landry and Sinclair co-founded Delavie Sciences in 2022 to build a skincare line around it. Their Aeonia serum became the first biological cosmetic ever recognized as Certified Space Technology™, with studies showing major increases in hyaluronic acid production, hydration, and skin elasticity — which means the company’s entire premise rests on genuinely novel science, not a reformulated version of an ingredient every other skincare brand already uses.

That’s a hard place to start a company from — the science has to actually hold up, because “space-tested” isn’t a claim you can fake past a scientifically literate customer for long.

Kyle walks through the research, the NASA connection, and building a company around it on this episode of Starting Small.

Listen to the full conversation with Dr. Kyle Landry on Apple Podcasts