outer

Outer Bio (also reported as Outer Biosciences) is a biotechnology company building a discovery platform for skin health. Its core technology, called Yuna, maintains ex vivo full-thickness human skin — epidermis, dermis, multiple resident cell types and preserved immune-associated molecular programs — alive and measurable for up to four weeks, compared with the roughly one week the company says conventional ex vivo skin remains usable. The stated rationale is that the biological processes that determine whether a treatment works, such as collagen remodeling, chronic inflammation and cellular senescence, unfold over weeks rather than days.

The platform combines three elements: the long-lived human tissue system; automated in vitro phenotype studies using robotic liquid handling and automated assays; and machine learning models trained on data generated from the company's own tissue rather than public datasets, used to surface novel targets and rank candidate compounds before experiments are run. Tissue is sourced from multiple donors across ages, races, genders and Fitzpatrick skin types. Discovery areas listed by the company include anti-aging, anti-senescence, regeneration, barrier function and inflammation. The company frames Yuna as a data-generation engine kept separate from the models that learn from it, and states that skin is a starting point rather than the intended limit of the approach.

Preclinical services offered include compound screening, efficacy studies of up to four weeks across diverse donors, claim development support, safety and toxicity assessment, collaborative discovery programs and custom research.

Founding story

According to the company, Outer Bio was founded to close the gap between what can be measured in a laboratory and what works in human skin, on the premise that the next generation of effective and safe skincare actives will come from studying compounds in human tissue rather than cell lines, animal models or computational prediction alone. The CEO has written that the platform was developed over roughly six years, motivated both by the scarcity of genuinely new topical mechanisms (noting retinoids as the only FDA-approved mechanism for visible skin aging in thirty years) and by the lack of living human tissue data available to train and validate AI models in biology.

Business model

Outer Bio operates a platform-based model: it discovers novel mechanisms and active molecules for skin, and also provides access to its human skin platform to external partners through research collaborations, preclinical services and co-development of proprietary ingredients.

Revenue is associated with partner-facing programs — screening, efficacy, safety and toxicity assessment, claim development support, collaborative discovery and custom research — as well as discovery and co-development of proprietary active ingredients.

Traction

Reported traction includes a completed multi-year platform build, a publicly posted bioRxiv preprint with validation studies of three interventions with known clinical answers, an assembled leadership team and board, approximately 24 employees, $23.0M in reported funding, and six active candidates according to press coverage.

Latest developments

In August 2026, press coverage reported that Outer Biosciences had raised $23.0M and had six active candidates, and reported that the company was founded by Michael Polansky. The company published a launch post introducing Outer Bio and the Yuna platform alongside a bioRxiv preprint, stating that a discovery engine and portfolio built on Yuna were advancing and that more would be shared subsequently.