“Silky" could be the most overused word in beauty today. Think: smooth as silk, silky soft skin. But, while silk has served as metaphor, fibroin - the biological name for pure silk fiber – has never been an ingredient in skincare, not in its pure state, until now. Pure silk does not include: 

• Sericin, the outer-like coating of the raw silk fiber. Sericin is a waste product from after the garment industry washes and refines silk fiber.

• Hydrolyzed silk, broken-down silk fibers which again are leftovers from textile processing.

Silk Therapeutics scientists isolate the fibroin and discard the sericin because sericin contains a high concentration of the serine amino acid and is known to cause an allergic reaction in humans. Only pure silk fibroin protein is known to be biocompatible (and allergen-free). With our patented process, we transform the pure silk fibroin into Activated Liquid Silk (shown here in a cool spin-y vortex in our production facility).

Our process is based on nearly two decades of research and was patented last year. This means that, for the first time, real, pure silk can be formulated into skincare, allowing us to make the cleanest, high-performance products available in the market. We’re putting the silk back in silky!