Can Skin Care be Healthcare?

For Sophie Bai ’14, beauty is more than skin deep. She started B.A.I. Biosciences in 2020 to bring biotech solutions to skin problems such as eczema and skin cancer.

By any measure, she is enjoying a stellar career: After graduating from MIT with a chemical engineering degree, Bai started her career as a management consultant at the Boston Consulting Group, then became vice president of healthcare and life sciences investing at Bain Capital. During her time at Harvard Business School, she founded PPEople First, a supply chain operation that dispensed medical protective equipment by the millions to front-line healthcare workers when Covid-19 hit.

But beneath the glittering resume is a painful story. As a child growing up in central China, Bai suffered from eczema and cystic acne.

“It was the first thing people noticed about me. Some people thought it was contagious. They didn’t even want to be around me,” she says.

At 11, judges eliminated her from a public speaking contest on the basis of appearance. Once extroverted and bubbly, she became self-conscious. She denied herself lunch for a week to save money for makeup, and she vowed never to be discounted again.

“My province was very populated, with 200 million people, and the resources in terms of education and healthcare were extremely limited. I knew that I should pursue science for better opportunities,” she says. 

And so she competed in STEM competitions throughout China; at 16, she won the International Science and Engineering Fair on behalf of China. She earned a full scholarship to MIT, studying under David H. Koch Institute Professor Robert Langer.

“He taught me how to think about my end goal and create technologies that can be applied in the real world, before working on complex academic problems,” she says.

In this case, her end goal is B.A.I.’s motto: Skincare is healthcare. She used her consulting and finance career savings to launch the company, with support from The Engine at MIT and the Blavatnik Fellowship in Life Science Entrepreneurship at Harvard, with the goal of medicalizing skincare to solve problems such as skin cancer and skin aging.

“The gold standard in dermatology is vitamin A, which was discovered in 1909—yet many dermatological problems remain unsolved,” says Bai. “You do not see other therapeutic areas use something that was discovered over 100 years ago. There is an upstream R&D discrepancy between dermatology and other therapeutic areas.” 

In 2023, the company launched its first product line, Pavise, with first-to-market molecules. Her patented DiamondCore molecule is a composite of metal oxides wrapped around nanodiamonds that achieves skin regenerating and protecting effects. Dynamic Age Defense, the DiamondCore-containing facial cream, works to protect against UVA rays, which cause 90 percent of skin aging; stimulates dermal fibroblast to restore collagen production and reverse dark spots or fine lines; and serves as a transdermal drug-delivery vehicle to improve penetration of other skincare ingredients.

There’s also Pavise lip oil, face wash, and even a self-diagnosing UV Camera that plugs into iPhones and iPads to detect existing skin damage. A new facial product is due to launch this fall.

The company has already reached $20 million in sales—and even Jay-Z is an investor. But science backs up the buzz.

“DiamondCore truly is the best molecule to target the root cause of skin aging and skin cancer,” she says. “We have scientific and clinical proof for every claim we make, including the effectiveness for wound healing post skin-cancer surgery and topical chemotherapy, reducing rosacea and dark spots, delaying skin aging, and lowering the risks of skin cancer.”

Interestingly, she doesn’t have a marketing team. Bai says that customers, many of whom are science-inclined or skin cancer survivors, find her naturally. Now, she dispenses products directly to dermatologists and physicians.

“I don’t think anything else is more impactful, more powerful, and more satisfying than saving people’s lives. I think that’s the greatest power anybody can have, and that’s why I’m just so passionate about healthcare, medicine, and doing what I do. In terms of what’s next: I want to cure eczema,” she says.