Genoskin has developed a tool that can test pharmaceutical, cosmetic and chemical products on real human skin, offering an alternative to animal testing.
Genoskin has raised €8m in its first funding round from a wide range of French investors to boost its scientific research and accelerate its global expansion. The US-France-based firm collects leftover human skin donated from plastic surgery procedures such as tummy tucks to pharmaceutical, cosmetic and biotech industries for testing.
The all-French funding round was led by private equity fund FPCI Occidev Impacts, Captech Santé, an early stage venture capital fund that specialises in healthcare technologies, GSO Innovation, a corporate venture capital firm, and CA Toulouse 31 Initiatives, a unit of Crédit Agricole Group which supports and finances innovative businesses in the Toulouse region.
Investors committed €5m in equity funding while French public sector investment bank Bpifrance and local banking partners BNP Paribas, Caisse d’Epargne and Crédit Agricole provided €3m in non-dilutive financing in structured bank debt.
“This funding gives Genoskin the resources to scale globally, strengthen our presence in key markets and accelerate the development of our innovative platforms,” said Pascal Descargues, founder and CEO of Genoskin.
Two new sites
Genoskin plans to double the production of its skin models by opening two new production sites – one in France in 2026 and another in the US in 2027.
With regulatory bodies increasingly asking for more humane and effective testing methods, Genoskin is “well-positioned” to lead the way when it comes to offering scalable and ethical alternatives to traditional animal models, according to Descargues.
“This investment validates our strategy and reinforces our position as a leader in predictive immunotoxicology using live human skin models,” Descargues said.
Demand for alternative testing models is projected to grow from close to $109bn this year to more than $155bn by 2034, acccording to a Global Markets Insight report.
“Captech Santé is pleased to contribute to the financing of Genoskin, a company capable of setting new global standards in the development of injectable drugs and that already counts most major global pharmaceutical companies among its clients,” said Alexandre Demailly, an investor at Captech Santé.
