On July 23, 2025, biotech company Debut announced the launch of its plant cell biotechnology platform that enables the creation of fragrance ingredients without cultivation. The company is launching the platform with its orris ingredient, inspired by the root of the iris flower.
Named one of the Time100 Most Innovative Companies of 2025, Debut specializes in cutting-edge AI and biotechnology to deliver efficient and sustainable ingredients. The L’Oréal-backed startup replicates the molecular olfactive “fingerprint” of fragrance ingredients, allowing for supply chain reliability and ingredient consistency.
Perfumer & Flavorist+ reached out to Debut’s founder and chief executive officer Joshua Britton to learn more about this biotechnology and where the company hopes to grow next.
What inspired the founding of Debut? What led you to the fragrance industry?
Joshua Britton [JB]: At Debut, we pride ourselves on breaking new scientific
Joshua Britton, CEO, founder, DebutCourtesy of Debut
We have successfully scaled biotechnology into skin and hair care and, for the past year, have been addressing the urgent challenges facing the fragrance industry. Climate change is wreaking havoc with ingredient sourcing, quality, and price. Unpredictable seasons are impacting crop and flower yields. Even floral scent emissions are compromised by global warming. Some plants are endangered and at risk of extinction. Global and EU regulations also threaten the use of a huge number of existing fragrance ingredients.
There is only one innovation that can address these myriad challenges: biotechnology. Debut’s plant cell biotechnology enables the creation of fragrance ingredients, from simple to complex molecules, without the need for any cultivation, allowing the fragrance industry to source high quality, high purity, molecularly consistent and renewable ingredients that are neither extracted from the earth nor derived from petroleum-based processes.
Can you briefly describe how ingredient development without cultivation works?
[JB]: Debut’s plant cell biotechnology mimics how plants make some of the most beautiful, powerful and complex molecules. We can replicate these high-value plant extracts in bioreactors via proprietary and scalable processes that eliminate the need for agriculture.
Complex fragrance ingredients, featuring a mix of molecules from the plant, can comprise up to a thousand compounds that cannot be made via a single precision fermentation process, as this would necessitate creating a huge number of compounds at different ratios. With plant cell biotechnology, we can recreate the molecular “fingerprint” of ingredients with high purity and achieve the perfect balance of compounds that match the original profile.
Our end-to-end capability, from the seed of the traditionally cultivated plant to a biotech approach requiring no plants (encompassing the establishment of stable plant cell suspension cultures and detection of key ingredient molecules), can be achieved in under a year. We have proved that we can replicate key compounds in cultivated extracts, including those that take up to five years to mature in nature, and we have developed proprietary know-how to foster the growth and optimization of our platform.
What kinds of companies are you looking to work with using these ingredients?
[JB]: We are working with global fragrance houses to pioneer the fragrance industry’s transition to a bold new future that will confer olfactive uniqueness and inherent sustainability to fragrance compositions, in addition to brands that want to secure exclusive molecules and blaze new olfactory trails.
How do Debut's ingredients offer solutions to customers? What specific pain points is it addressing?
[JB]: Debut’s plant cell biotechnology enables even the most complex fragrance ingredients to be replicated rapidly, sustainably and cost-effectively for speed-to-market in safe, controllable and environmentally-sound conditions. The transition to bio-based formulas ensures safe, sustainable fragrances from renewable feedstocks and according to the highest standards of purity while eliminating potential allergens that can be found in ingredients extracted from nature.
Plant cell culture is a highly efficient process that dispenses with the need to plunder precious natural resources from the earth. It uses zero pesticides, produces minimal waste, requires minimal carbon dioxide/land/water and uses no harsh chemicals. Plant cell biotechnology also overcomes supply chain constraints, ensures consistent ingredient quality and is an alternative to traditional petrochemical-based ingredients. Beyond sustainability, the technology will also enable the creation of higher-performing fragrances in the future, the perfect confluence of art and science.
The company is starting with its orris ingredient. Why did you choose this ingredient to make your debut?
[JB]: Orris is the crown jewel in perfumery. It is one of the most expensive and prized fragrance ingredients, costing more than gold even (up to $100,000 per kilogram). Orris is also exceedingly rare because of its painstaking aging and cultivation process. After harvesting, it takes approximately five years to age the dried rhizome.
Orris is a highly complex mix of molecules with a unique and revered scent profile. It is a huge challenge to master so, of course, it is right up Debut’s alley!
We recently achieved a scientific breakthrough in the bioproduction of natural, brilliantly red carmine, one of the hardest molecules to duplicate, and we knew that orris was our next big challenge. As our inaugural fragrance ingredient, orris also allows us to prove our biotechnology, and we are now optimizing our platform and creating a pipeline with large companies.
How is biotechnology changing the game in the fragrance industry?
[JB]: Biotechnology is the game-changer that will protect and elevate the perfumery palette to new levels of creativity. There is no doubt that biotechnology will not only be the eventual source of nearly all renewable, natural fragrance molecules but also become the major source of perfumery innovation and novel molecules, akin to creating a new palette of “colors” that unlocks exciting new possibilities for perfumers.
Plant cell biotechnology will bring hitherto unseen innovation and performance to the fragrance industry. Fragrances from plants that are very hard to grow, or barely grow, will become new sources of inspiration. The joint forces of AI and biotechnology will design molecules that target specific receptors in the nose to impact mood, memory, and function. We are on the cusp of some hugely exciting developments!
Where do you see this technology going in the future?
[JB]: Biotechnology will create a huge intellectual property moat in the fragrance industry thanks to novel, biotech-derived ingredients and AI that will confer differentiation and new functionality to fragrance formulas. It will allow brands to create novel solutions that they can legally protect for 20-plus years, in addition to outpacing the competition based on clinically-backed performance for the first time ever. Without access to novel ingredients, perfumers will have a severely restricted palette, both because of ever-encroaching ingredient regulation and a narrowing of creative possibilities. We look forward to neuroscents (functional fragrances), formulated with science-backed research, that trigger physiological responses and enhance mood and wellbeing.
What's next for Debut? Where do you want to see the company in the next 12 months?
[JB]: Debut is laser-focused on creating higher-performing biotech ingredients and formulations backed by outstanding science and clinical testing. In skincare, we are developing preventative and restorative solutions that address the “14 hallmarks of skin aging” and we are also moving into beauty from within. Our AI platform, BeautyORB, is designed to discover peak-performing ingredients with unique health, cosmetic and fragrance benefits using a massive foundation of biological and molecular data.
With 50 billion potential ingredients on this earth, we are leveraging our generative AI capabilities to discover new and natural molecules from huge amounts of data to drive breakthrough outcomes in beauty and fragrance. Our formulations will drive rapid growth across skin, hair, fragrance and other categories, and we are prioritizing science and technology in these areas.
For all of us at Debut, being best-in-class in whatever we do, breaking new scientific ground with each project, and setting bold new standards is non-negotiable.
