Meet Greg Altman, Ph.D of Silk

Today we’d like to introduce you to Greg Altman, Ph.D.

Greg, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.

After meeting at Tufts, Rebecca LaCouture who we call “Beck”, and I collaborated as research partners for over a decade.

Much of that time was spent exploring the biomedical applications for natural silk fiber within the human body, before ultimately turning our focus to skincare. Neither of us had experience in the field, but we were disheartened by the lack of transparency in the beauty industry and felt that something needed to urgently change.

Over time, harsh skincare ingredients can contribute to body burden and environmental pollution. Most beauty products contain 50+ ingredients, many of the synthetic fillers, preservatives, and incidentals (the ingredients used to make ingredients, often undisclosed preservatives that can be endocrine disruptors).

We wanted to see skincare that was clean, safe and biocompatible, both for people and the world we live in. We knew that silk protein had a natural affinity for the skin’s primary protein, collagen, and wondered if these benefits could be harnessed for the topical treatment of skin.

We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?

As a cancer survivor at the age of 27, Beck had an intimate understanding of the needs of those with ultra-sensitive skin. Meanwhile, my young son’s severe eczema and a hyper-reactive immune system meant he required intensive daily skincare treatments. These personal experiences shaped our awareness as we strove to create clean, minimal ingredient products that were safe for all skin types, even the most sensitive.

Delving into the natural chemistry behind silk, I began to reimagine skincare from the ground up, while Beck harnessed her engineering background to develop the custom manufacturing processes needed to bring these ideas to life.

The result was pure Liquid Silk, simply made from natural silk protein and water in a sustainable, environmentally-friendly process. It’s our powerhouse ingredient that eliminates the need for synthetic fillers and harsh preservatives, enabling us to create highly concentrated products with only a handful of clean, active ingredients. We’re proud to now have a full Silk Therapeutics skincare collection, with each product manufactured on-site at our Medford headquarters.

We’ve since discovered that our core technology has wide-ranging applications beyond skincare. We are teaming with leading apparel brands to help create a more sustainable apparel industry, replacing synthetic finishing chemicals with natural, biodegradable Liquid Silk, and we continue to explore medical applications, too.

The long-term possibilities for Liquid Silk are far-reaching, and we hope to ultimately use this clean ingredient to replace synthetic chemistry across a wide range of markets.

So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Silk, Inc. story. Tell us more about the business.

At Silk, we are harnessing nature’s most elegant chemistry to advance the world’s health.

For us, “clean” is both a promise and a standard, and we’re committed to creating products that are hypoallergenic, biocompatible, sustainable and safe for people and the environment. Transparency is one of our core values, and we proudly make all of our products on-site at our company’s headquarters in Medford. This enables full control of our manufacturing process, allowing us to ensure that everything is of the highest quality.

We produce our Liquid Silk from natural cocoons that have been sustainably and organically farmed, and thanks to Beck’s expertise, our manufacturing processes operate economically at commercial scale – empowering us to use our clean technology to generate a positive global impact.

Our biocompatible, biodegradable Liquid Silk is a safe and effective way to enhance the performance of everyday products. In skincare, it teams with the skin’s primary protein, collagen, resulting in a healthy and radiant appearance. And in apparel, it provides an array of functional and tactile applications, from moisture wicking to waterproofing, delivering technical benefits without the need for fossil fuel-based ingredients.

We strongly believe that less is more, and beyond a list of banned ingredients, we are dedicated to ensuring that each Liquid Silk-powered product is beneficial for both people and the world we live in. It’s more than just an ingredient: it’s a sustainable alternative to synthetic chemistry, capable of enacting real change at an industrial scale.

Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?

For us, luck may be better defined as chance or probability. If you had told us five years ago that we would be in charge of a skincare line, we wouldn’t have believed you. But what has guided Beck and I throughout our careers is simply hard work: to harness the maximum number of chances to succeed or fail.

As scientists, experimentation is crucial, and we view failure as an essential learning experience. Luck has best served us in our ability to fail fast, giving us opportunities to test new hypotheses and eventually find solutions that do work.

Personal experiences have shaped our path, too, and while it would be flippant to describe these as “luck,” these challenges – from chemotherapy to systemic allergies – have served as motivation, altering the trajectory of our careers and inspiring us to take chances in order to make a real difference.

Founding Silk was a risk, and it took a lot of hard work and persistence to achieve our goals. Our single-minded determination to advance the world’s health has enabled us to get to where we are today, and we’re incredibly excited to see where this journey takes us next.

Oh, and as far as pure luck goes: I’d be remiss to not mention my chance meeting with Dan Kraft, where I discovered that he and his family shared our passion for advancing human health. What began as a happenstance encounter evolved into a mutual enthusiasm for clean skincare, and the Kraft family’s support was instrumental in founding our company and helping us to accomplish what we have so far.

Pricing:

• Silk Therapeutics C-ADVANCE Anti-Aging Intensive Serum – 30ml $122.00
• Silk Therapeutics RENEWING PEEL Weekly Rejuvenation – 30ml $70.00
• Silk Therapeutics HYDRA-RICH Advanced Moisturizing Cream – 50ml $120.00
• Silk Therapeutics PURELY RADIANT Daily Hydrating Serum – 30 ml $85.00
• Silk Therapeutics REFRESH Facial Cleanser – 150ml $36.00
• Silk Therapeutics EYE REVIVE brightening & firming – 15ml. $85.00
• Silk Therapeutics PURELY SMOOTH daily firming complex – 50ml $140.00