Bridging Clean and Performance: CEO Dennis Zlotnik on BioReNuva’s Biosurfactant Breakthroughs

BioReNuva Founder and CEO Dennis Zlotnik reflects on the promise and challenges of biosurfactants in cosmetics and previews the company’s next-gen engineered strains that could transform product performance and scalability within 12–18 months.

“What formulators and consumers are looking for are natural ingredients that can perform,” noted Dennis Zlotnik, Founder and CEO of BioReNuva, in a July 31 interview.

Founded in 2022 with its headquarters in Austin, TX, BioReNuva aims to deliver just that. The biotech is focused on providing the beauty and personal care industry with biosurfactants, such as sophorolipids and rhamnolipids, to replace traditional petrochemical-derived surfactants and fulfil needs unanswered by plant-based alternatives.

“Biotechnology unlocks the functionality of traditional chemical ingredients, but pairs that with the safety and skin compatibility of natural ingredients,” Zlotnik said.

He explained the problem that BioReNuva set out to solve: “Historically there was this kind of petrochemical comfort zone—formulators were working with sulfates, quats, acrylic polymers, and they were getting great performance: silky textures, instant high foam, emulsion stability. But there was pushback. How compatible are these ingredients with the skin? What’s the clinical benefit? Then came the ‘green rush’—replacing petrochemical ingredients with plant oils, clays, herbal extracts. Consumers loved the stories, but formulators struggled mightily.”

That’s where biotechnology comes in. “These are ingredients made biologically that can perform the way formulators expect and deliver the clinical results consumers are used to.”

Why Biosurfactants?

Surfactants are one of the most widely used ingredient classes in beauty and personal care. Zlotnik saw an opening: “We looked at all the components that go into beauty care products and asked: where has biotechnology gained adoption? We saw huge adoption in active ingredients, which now have close to 25% penetration. But surfactants—virtually none. We saw an opportunity to develop biosurfactants that meet consumer requirements for quality and performance and that can work economically in personal care.”

Zlotnik noted that unlike traditional surfactants, which can irritate skin, biosurfactants are extremely mild. He attributed this to the fermentation process, which produces biosurfactants by feeding sugar and vegetables oil to microorganisms.

Moreover, “If you measure surfactant efficacy—commonly by looking at factors like critical micelle concentration (CMC) or surface tension—biosurfactants are some of the lowest CMC surfactants in the world,” Zlotnik said. “They’re an order of magnitude lower CMC than, for example, a sodium laureth sulfate, which is the most common surfactant available and used in the market today. And they reduce surface tension better than sodium laureth sulfate or cocomidopropyl betaine or any other number of chemical or bio-based surfactants.”

Additionally, biosurfactants represent a wide range of clinical benefits that traditional surfactants simply do not have, Zlotnik said. He pointed to biosurfactants’ moisturizing, antimicrobial and anti-inflammatory properties, which are well-recognized in scientific literature and borne out by BioReNuva’s own research.

“If you’re looking at corneometer and transepidermal water loss results, they’re fantastic because they’re made from sugar and sugar is super-hydroscopic. They’re really good at sebum control because they have that really low CMC. They have incredible antimicrobial potency if you’re looking for preservation boosting or reducing microbes that can lead to acne, dandruff, or biofilm production,” he said.

New Molecules, New Challenges

After just 18-24 months on the market, BioReNuva is producing around 25-30 metric tons of biosurfactants per month for some two dozen customers, including brands stocked at Sephora, Ulta, and Target. Its sales footprint spans from North America to Western Europe and Northern Asia.

The company sees the masstige beauty segment as the current sweet spot for biosurfactant adoption. While the mass market generally remains too price-sensitive, masstige strikes the right balance—affordable yet positioned to invest in performance-driven, “clean” ingredient stories.

According to Zlotnik, the biggest barrier to biosurfactant uptake isn’t cost as much as the formulation challenges that biosurfactants can pose compared with traditional surfactants. “They behave differently,” he said.

The CEO noted that conventional tools like HLB (hydrophilic-lipophilic balance) and HLD (hydrophilic-lipophilic deviation), commonly used to predict surfactant behavior in emulsions or cleaning systems, don’t apply as neatly to these biologically derived molecules. Likewise, tried-and-true techniques such as thickening a shampoo or body wash simply by adding salt—a standard approach with ionic surfactants like sulfates—don’t work with biosurfactants.

This unpredictability has led BioReNuva to invest heavily in application support and knowledge-sharing with formulators. “It’s discovering, ourselves, what is the best way to use these ingredients across all the different types of platforms and segments and variations and SKUs of products around the world and transmitting that knowledge to the formulator,” Zlotnik said.

Beyond ‘Wild’

The “wild-type” biosurfactants that BioReNuva is producing now rely on yeast and bacterial strains essentially straight from nature. They are mild and effective, but limited in yield and sensory performance (e.g., lower foam than sulfates).

The next frontier is engineered biosurfactants. Using tools like CRISPR and directed evolution, scientists can “tune” microbes to produce biosurfactants that are higher-performing, more predictable in formulations, and more cost-efficient, potentially opening the door to mass-market beauty.

Recent strategic investment from Hallstar Growth Ventures—the venture arm of The Hallstar Company, a specialty chemical supplier where Zlotnik served 11 years as a market development leader—will help fund that next step.

BioReNuva is leveraging the new capital almost exclusively for strain engineering. The company has a BSL-2 lab in Austin with a growing team of metabolic engineers.

“We’re using techniques that only a decade ago were limited to academic or pharmaceutical applications,” Zlotnik said. “We think even with some minor improvements using moderate tools, we’re going be able to create orders of magnitude improvement on overall yields and performances and costs.”

The company is targeting its launch of those new bioengineered strains within the next 12-18 months.

About Dennis Zlotnik

Dennis Zlotnik is the founder and CEO of BioReNuva, where he spearheads the company’s mission to transform beauty and home care through high-performance biosurfactants. With over a decade of experience in global ingredient development—including leadership roles in Asia’s beauty sector—Dennis combines deep cosmetic formulation expertise with biotech-driven innovation. Under his leadership, BioReNuva has scaled its fermentation platform and secured strategic investment from Hallstar Growth Ventures, validating its potential to deliver sustainable, clinically proven ingredients at commercial scale.