Lifestyle
These L.A. musicians investigated a medical mystery. What they discovered launched a new skincare line
The love story of musicians Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger and Mike Einziger was fortified in a lab.
After meeting through a mutual colleague in 2010, the Santa Monica-based couple’s courtship began the following year, as they were collaborating with Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer on a series of film scores. Einziger is best known as the founding guitarist of California-based rock band Incubus. His wife is a renowned composer and violinist for artists including Jethro Tull, Ringo Starr, Dave Matthews Band and Stevie Nicks.
The couple had been seeing one another for only about a year when together they stumbled upon a medical mystery. It resulted in a thrilling scientific discovery, the founding of a biotech beauty company called Mother Science — and their own unique happily-ever-after.
“It was an unexpected journey,” said Simpson-Einziger.
“We were simply trying to answer a series of unanswered scientific questions,” her husband added.
It all began in 2012 when Simpson-Einziger developed a fungal infection while traveling abroad. A classically trained violinist by trade, she was performing with composer A.R. Rahman in India when she noticed lightened patches of skin on her back and under her bra line. They resembled “loosely drawn flower blooms, with rounded edges,” she said.
After consulting her dermatologist, Simpson-Einziger was diagnosed with a temporary fungal infection called Tinea versicolor, which can lighten or darken skin pigmentation as a result of humidity.
“It’s an imbalance of the microbiome,” Simpson-Einziger said. “The condition was harmless, it resolves on its own and [I was told] that the lightened patches of skin would all go back to normal. But I got so curious.”
“We learned pretty quickly that there were no real hypotheses about how this was happening.”
— Mike Einziger, co-founder of Mother Science and Incubus guitarist
Armed with an undergraduate degree in biology from the University of Virginia, the former physics and chemistry teacher pored through science journals like Pigment International and Chembiochem to find articles that better explained the science behind her skin condition. She then began to wonder if whatever had caused it could also be used as a skincare aid that reduced dark spots.
She enlisted the help of her then-fiancé, Einziger, who also happened to have a background in science. He had recently completed the two-year Special Student program at Harvard University’s Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where he studied cosmology and evolutionary biology. He still had access to the university’s considerable research databases, which meant he could help her look up articles on Tinea versicolor. Soon, he joined her obsession.
“There was tons of literature to research, but nothing coming at it from our perspective,” said Einziger. “We learned pretty quickly that there were no real hypotheses about how this was happening.”
Though they still couldn’t prove it, Simpson-Einziger’s theory that her skin condition could be of use in the beauty world kept them both up at night.
“I actually had a nightmare that somebody took her idea,” he said.
It was then, in 2015, that he called Dr. Jonathan Sackier, a family friend and biotech and medical entrepreneur, who co-invented robotic surgery.
“I taught his daughter violin lessons when I was a recent college graduate living in Virginia,” Simpson-Einziger said.
“We went to [him] fully prepared that we were going to get laughed out of the room,” Einziger added.
Sackier remembers the couple’s uncertainty during the phone call. “Ann-Marie was in the background, whispering, ‘He’s going to think we’re idiots,’” he said. “[Mike] asked if I could identify what it was about the fungal infection that was causing depigmentation and having identified it, could I synthesize or somehow isolate the chemical so that we could do something to impact pigmentation disorders.”
A surgeon by specialty, Sackier connected them with his colleague, Timothy Macdonald, a scientist and professor emeritus of chemistry and pharmacology at the University of Virginia.
“I have taken many projects to him over the years,” Sackier said. “I call him ‘Dr. No,’ because he always says, ‘No, that doesn’t make sense. No, that won’t work.’ When I told him this, he went, ‘Holy moly, that’s impressive.’”
Macdonald began advising the couple and helped connect them with a North Carolina-based research organization called PharmaDirections. The drug development company helped design a scientific program to explore various compounds that had caught the Einzigers’ attention while researching.
After countless studies, they discovered that a naturally occurring molecule that had co-evolved with the human microbiome, Malassezin (pronounced mal-uh-say-zin), could be beneficial for sun spots. While the molecule was identified and named in 2001, the Einzigers were the first to recognize that Malassezin could be valuable in the context of skincare.
“Malassezin is made from a yeast,” said New York-based dermatologist Dr. Amy Wechsler. “When someone has the yeast infection on their skin, the skin often bleaches temporarily.”
The couple filed an application to patent the discovery in 2016. (It was officially granted in 2018.) They then worked with a team of scientists including cosmetic chemist Susan Goldsberry and beauty innovation entrepreneur Tim McCraw to develop Malassezin into a topical serum after previously manufacturing it through a separate process called chemical synthesis.
They began testing to see if it could benefit melanocytes, the skin cells that produce melanin, the dark pigment in question. The couple used their personal savings to fund the initial research.
“I justified it as, ‘How much would I pay for an education where experts in the field teach me how to characterize a molecule and then commercialize it?’” Simpson-Einziger said. “That one-on-one education was worth what we put into investigating this molecule.”
They brought on beauty industry veteran Edna Coryell, McCraw’s daughter, as co-founder and CEO of Mother Science in August 2017 to oversee further research and development, which involved in vitro studies, 3D cell cultures, ex vivo skin testing and genetic analysis. Coryell had never brought a new ingredient to the market until Malassezin.
“It is very rare,” said Coryell. “Truly, as we were going through [the process], it was writing the playbook for this.’”
The Einzigers also collaborated with Dr. Pearl Grimes, director of the Vitiligo & Pigmentation Institute of Southern California, who specializes in vitiligo and pigmentation disorders.
“This is somebody who’s been looking at Tinea versicolor for decades,” Einziger said. “Her first reaction was, ‘How did you guys figure this out?’”
“I was 100% fascinated,” Grimes said of reviewing their initial in vitro studies. “The science [and] the concept was disruptive.”
Grimes assembled a clinical program, which led to proof-of-concept data that’s since been published in peer-reviewed journals including the American Academy of Dermatology and Journal of Drugs in Dermatology.
She went so far as to take a skin biopsy from her own elbow for lab testing. Using VISIA skin analysis technology, she found that the serum helped fade hyperpigmentation on the sample.
“That’s when I really knew that it worked,” Grimes said. “I used it in a stubborn area, and I could clearly see via photographic documentation that it was responding.”
“Having holes punched in my face was an ultimate act of belief in what we’ve made.”
— Ann Marie Simpson-Einziger, co-founder of Mother Science and violinist
Einziger also biopsied a patch on his arm for Grimes to analyze. “We felt responsible,” he said. “Mine was done before we even did the human clinical study.”
Simpson-Einziger joked that she too “put real skin in the game” after she said she had her face punch-biopsied — a procedure in which an instrument is used to remove a deeper skin sample — three times.
“Having holes punched in my face was an ultimate act of belief in what we’ve made,” Simpson-Einziger said.
Once the Einzigers confirmed that the data supported their initial hypothesis in a human clinical study, they moved forward with a business plan for what eventually became Mother Science. (It joins the couple’s two other co-founded businesses, including Mixhalo, a networking technology company for live events.)
Mother Science — named as a nod to French physicist and chemist Marie Curie — was born as a result of raising an initial round of approximately $3.2 million in seed funding from a small group of venture capitalists and angel investors, including Hawktail’s Michael Polansky and Drew Houston, the co-founder of Dropbox. After more than six years of research, Malassezin became the DNA of Mother Science, which officially launched in 2023 with its first product, Molecular Hero Serum ($89). The product is meant to reduce hyperpigmentation and brighten skin.
“It’s a powerful antioxidant,” Simpson-Einziger said. “When we started testing, we learned that Malassezin happens to offer superior protection against hydroxyl and peroxyl free radicals, which are [some of] the most damaging. We had this molecule that was going to do something marvelous in protecting the skin.”
A second product, Retinol Synergist ($96), was released earlier this year. And Molecular Genesis Barrier Repair Moisturizer ($68), featuring Malassezin, will be released on Jan. 7.
“Malassezin is really versatile, as it’s able to target hyperpigmentation, improve the skin’s moisture barrier and provide potent antioxidant protection without any irritation,” said Connecticut-based dermatologist Dr. Mona Gohara, who is also an associate clinical professor at Yale University. “The beauty of it is it’s gentle but also highly efficacious.”
In 2016, the same year the Einzigers filed a patent for their scientific discovery, the couple married. They are now parents to four children including a nearly one-year-old son. Because their courtship intersected with their scientific passion project, they consider Mother Science their fifth child.
“We had a lot of people who said, ‘You don’t want to do this. This is too hard. It’s going to take years.’” Simpson-Einziger said, pausing. “I remember thinking, ‘Years don’t scare me. I have a baby. I’m going to have to take care of a human for 18 years.’ There are no guarantees when you have a child how they’re going to turn out, but you do it out of love, out of passion, and it makes your life richer.”
While the couple continues to grow Mother Science’s product lineup, Simpson-Einziger is most proud of their process of discovery itself.
“We’re excited about contributing to science, and having that legacy as part of our brand,” she said.
She hopes Malassezin will one day be as universally known as Vitamin C and hyaluronic acid.
“I want people talking about Malassezin, not even about our brand, just about Malassezin,” she said.
In other words, she and her husband hope the ingredients of their products will be front and center — not themselves.
“Nobody is excited about coming to me for their skincare needs,” Einziger, who still regularly sells out stadiums with Incubus, said with a laugh. “I’m just a person who plays music who happens to be curious about the skin microbiome.”
Lifestyle
Stay away from Dr. Google, and other lessons learned about hypochondria
If you’ve ever Googled a list of health symptoms — and become convinced you have a serious illness and are doomed — you might be suffering from hypochondria. Author Caroline Crampton wrote A Body Made of Glass: A Cultural History of Hypochondria, because she’s pretty sure she has it.
“It’s a fear that can’t be substantiated by any medical tests you might do,” Crampton says of hypochondria, which is now known medically as illness anxiety disorder. “The definition that I like, and that I use, comes from the Oxford English Dictionary. And it runs, ‘a mental condition characterized by the persistent and unwarranted belief or fear that one has a serious illness.’”
Crampton developed excessive health anxiety after being treated for blood cancer in her teens. Though the cancer went into remission, it returned a year later. She has since undergone several therapies for her health anxiety.
Crampton says hypochondria can manifest as illness anxiety and/or somatic symptoms. In the former, patients suffer from excessive hypervigilance and anxiety around potential health problems. Somatic symptom disorder, meanwhile, includes anxiety, but “adds this extra thing of phantom symptoms,” she says.
Of course, sometimes symptoms really do point to an underlying physiological problem and need medical treatment. Crampton says she doesn’t hesitate to have a doctor check out symptoms that she’s worrying over. Because of her serious medical history, she says doctors usually treat her concerns with respect. But says she knows that many people have experienced doctors disbelieving them or writing off their concerns as merely anxiety, “only to have a serious diagnosis later on that could have been caught much earlier.”
The Internet can stoke hypochondria by offering access to seemingly limitless information about health conditions, but Crampton notes that the condition predates the information age. In fact, her book takes it’s title from “glass delusion,” a centuries-old psychological disorder in which people — including the French King Charles VI — suddenly think their bodies are made of glass.
“I don’t think the glass delusion is hypochondria,” she says. “But the more I became fascinated by [glass delusion] and researched it, the more I began to think that it was a very good image or metaphor for what it feels like to have hypochondria, because the sufferers from the glass delusion were absolutely obsessed with the idea that they were breakable and fragile.”
Interview highlights
On how the Internet can stoke “cyberchondria”
I try and restrict myself. I don’t not look at the Internet in relation to my health, but I limit myself only to reputable sources, in particular here in the U.K., the NHS website has a very, very wide ranging catalog of illnesses and connects all the symptoms together and will allow you to click through and see how things relate to each other. So that’s my first port of call. I look at the NHS website, I know it’s evidence-backed and I know it will tell me: “If you think you have this, please go to the doctor,” and so on. And yeah, there is a shortlist of others that I take the same approach to. What I try not to do — I would say I never do it — is just type symptoms into Google … with no sort of guardrails at all because that’s where I can easily find myself falling down a spiral and getting into a really bad place mentally.
On being care-seeking vs. care-avoidant
People fall into either care-seeking or care-avoidant. People tend to be very polarized. I’m definitely care-seeking. I think whether it’s helpful or not often depends on the type of doctor that you see. I’ve seen some incredibly helpful doctors and I’ve seen some incredibly unhelpful ones. So in some ways it feels a bit like the luck of the draw. You never know quite what you’re going to get. But I think I would always encourage people to seek medical help if they have a reason to do so, if that makes sense. I, on balance, feel it’s always better to go than not go.
I do my best to take medical personnel at face value, if that makes sense. And I try and do this test in my mind of: If it’s serious enough for me to worry about, then it’s serious enough for me to go to the doctor. And if it’s serious enough again, I’ll go to the doctor again. … I’m there in good faith. I try and assume that the doctor or the medical professional is there in good faith, too. And if they’re not, I will just go back and ask for a second opinion.
On how medical professionals have reacted to her illness anxiety
Almost all of the time I find myself taken very seriously. Sometimes a little voice in my head says, “maybe too seriously.” Maybe occasionally I could benefit from being told, “It’s nothing to worry about. You can go home.” I think because of my serious medical history and the fact that my medical file is like half a foot wide, I feel like every single little thing that I even vaguely mentioned gets tested, which is in some ways an incredibly fortunate thing to happen.
On the relationship between hypochondria and PTSD
I spoke to some people when I was working on the book … such as someone who was a twin, and her twin had had some quite serious childhood illnesses that required them to be hospitalized. She, the other twin, had been completely healthy. But watching her twin go through that … as an adult surfaced for her as hypochondria. Other people who had a very close friend pass away young from a serious condition. And then after … that trauma, they had then developed anxiety about their health, having previously never suffered from it before. So it feels like an idea that checks out to me that you might respond to a really traumatic event by developing the anxiety that something similar might be going to happen to you in the future.
On cognitive behavioral therapy treatment and hypochondria
CBT was really helpful for the small day-to-day problems such as Googling your symptoms and reading health-related stuff on the Internet, or watching too much wellness things on Instagram, or spending too long checking on your moles, that kind of thing. That can be really helpful in changing those kinds of daily behaviors. So the exercise is mostly just not doing them for long periods of time and having to record every time you felt the impulse to do it and how you were feeling at the time. So that it was very helpful to be able to associate, I’m feeling anxious about this work thing I’ve got coming up, I seem to be checking WebMD a lot more than I normally would. Maybe those things are related. So it was very helpful for things like that.
On her new appreciation for her body
Until my diagnosis when I was 17, I very much thought of myself as a brain in a jar. I thought the only part of me that would ever produce any value was in my mind and that [my] body was just the way I moved the mind around the world. It would never do anything remarkable. Since going through all the treatment as difficult and traumatic as it was at times, I did come out of it with this incredible appreciation for the myriad complexities of the human body. …
Sometimes I feel a bit like if you go into a really incredible building, like a cathedral or a civic hall and you have this feeling of awe that while, wow, someone conceived of this design and then it was built and now I can stand inside it, I sometimes feel that a sense of awe, a bit like that, thinking of my own body, strange as that sounds, I kind of look at it. Wow, look at what it’s doing. I’m not even thinking about this. I’m not making it do any of this. Look how magnificent it is. So it has given me this slightly cheesy appreciation for what the human body can do and made me a little bit more interested.
Sam Briger and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Carmel Wroth adapted it for the web.
Lifestyle
The people growing their own toilet paper
One million trees worldwide are cut down each year to make toilet paper. Is it more sustainable to grow your own?
In Meru, a town in eastern Kenya, a lush, leafy plant sways over the landscape. Benjamin Mutembei, a Meru resident, is growing the Plectranthus barbatus plant – not for food, but to use as toilet paper. He started growing the plant in 1985. “I learned about it from my grandfather and have been using it ever since. It’s soft and has a nice smell,” he says.
Plectranthus barbatus is a leafy plant that can grow up to 2m (6.6ft) tall. Its leaves are roughly the size of an industrial toilet paper square and emit a minty, lemony fragrance. Covered in tiny hairs, the leaves have a soft texture. This plant thrives in warm tropical temperatures and partial sunlight and is widely grown across Africa, where it is sometimes used to demarcate property boundaries.
“This has been an African tissue for a long time, and everyone in my household uses the plant. I only buy modern toilet rolls when the leaves have all been plucked,” Mutembei says.
The Plectranthus barbatus plant has provided Mutembei with a cost-effective alternative to purchasing toilet paper in Kenya. Like many commodities, the price of toilet paper has risen across Africa, largely due to the high cost of imported raw materials, such as wood pulp, which is essential for the production of toilet roll. Raw material costs now make up 75-80% of the final cost of tissue products in Kenya, according to the Kenya Association of Manufacturers.
Toilet paper made from virgin wood pulp currently dominates the global industry. “Typical toilet paper is made of 70-80% short fibre hardwood and 20-30% long fibre hardwood,” says Ronalds Gonzalez, a professor in the Department of Forest Biomaterials at North Carolina State University.
Martin Odhiambo, a herbalist at the National Museum of Kenya who specialises in traditional plants, thinks the solution to the environmental impact of cutting trees for toilet paper may already be here.
“Plectranthus barbatus is the African toilet paper. Many young people nowadays are unaware of this plant, but it has the potential to be an environmentally friendly alternative to toilet paper,” he says.
There is no official data on exactly how many people use the plant as toilet paper in Kenya; however, it is widely grown in various parts of Africa and continues to be used in many rural areas where it is easily accessible, says Odhiambo.
Plectranthus barbatus grows to its full height in 1-2 months from a cutting and the cutting itself costs around 50 Kenyan shillings ($0.37).
“The leaves are similar in size to an industrial toilet paper square, making them suitable for use in modern flush toilets or for composting in latrines,” says Odhiambo.
Visitors from across Kenya attend Odhiambo’s lectures on the uses of Plectranthus barbatus and buy cuttings from his botanical garden at the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi.
“My class has grown to over 600 participants. People are enthusiastic about learning how to use the plant and often ask for cuttings and seedlings to take back to their towns,” he says.
The potential of the plant is also being explored in other countries.
Robin Greenfield, an environmental activist who runs a non-profit advocating for sustainable living in Florida in the US, has been using the leaves of Plectranthus barbatus for five years.
Greenfield runs a “grow your own toilet paper” initiative and cultivates over 100 Plectranthus barbatus plants at his Florida nursery. He shares cuttings for free or for voluntary donations, encouraging people to grow their own toilet paper. So far, he says he has distributed cuttings to hundreds of people.
“There are many people who associate using the toilet paper plant with poverty,” says Greenfield, though he points out that industrial toilet paper is ultimately made from plants too.
Greenfield says he’s had positive feedback from people who have used the plant. “For anybody who feels a little hesitant to try this plant, I would say to drop your worries about what people think about you. And simply by saying, ‘I’m going to be me, and that might mean wiping my butt with some really soft leaves that I grow,’” he says.
But how realistic is it that this plant might become more widely used?
Large-scale production has not yet been explored. Instead companies such as WEPA, one of Europe’s largest toilet paper manufacturers, are reducing the environmental impact of conventional toilet paper in other ways. WEPA has developed a new method using recycled cardboard to produce toilet paper, which does not involve bleaching the fibres, a spokesperson says.
The toilet paper plant, meanwhile, is expected to have a “minimal” impact on the industry, says a WEPA spokesperson.
One drawback is that wastewater and disposal systems, especially in Europe, aren’t designed to handle this type of paper, as only soluble items can be flushed through the system, the spokesperson says.
Greenfield says that’s where compost toilets come in. “I use a compost toilet. The leaves go back to the earth and produce soil, which can then support food growth. It’s a closed-loop system, and I think using these leaves could lead us to a conversation about the environmental benefits of composting.”
Applequist suggests that growing the plant in a controlled environment, within a designated area, and monitoring its growth to limit expansion into the existing ecosystem could help mitigate environmental risks.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to going mainstream, though, remains public acceptance. But from his plant nursery in Nairobi, Odhiambo remains hopeful.
“I know some people see using leaves as toilet paper as a step backward, but understanding the benefits of this plant, I believe it could become the next green alternative,” says Odhiambo. “I’ve been growing it in my nursery and sharing it with communities across Kenya, and people have been amazed by its convenience. If we keep an open mind and continue promoting this plant, we could eventually mass produce it for widespread use.”
This content was created with funding from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
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Lifestyle
Pope Francis goes electric in new eco-friendly popemobile
Pope Francis is going electric for the 2025 Jubilee processional, after being gifted an electric G-Class Mercedes-Benz popemobile by the automaker’s chief executive this week.
“We are moving towards zero emissions and are launching many electric products,” Ola Källenius told the Vatican. “This year we launched the electric G-Class.”
Källenius said the white, luxury convertible was specifically designed “paying attention to all the Holy Father’s needs.”
Francis has been using a wheelchair publicly since 2022 after a number of health issues.
Mercedes-Benz, which has been behind the popemobile since 1930, said it hopes the convertible “will provide the Holy Father with the comfort he needs for his travels.”
The “one-of-a-kind” pope transit vehicle comes equipped with finishes including a retractable roof and a rotating seat for Francis to greet audiences.
The popemobile is an iconic piece of Vatican imagery.
The car’s conversion to electric comes as the pope has repeatedly urged people worldwide to accept the science of climate change and work to protect the environment.
The Vatican says it plans to convert all of its vehicles to emission-free options by 2030.
Catholic Jubilees are celebrated every 25 years and are “precious times for taking stock of our lives, both as individuals and as communities,” Francis has said.
The 2025 Jubilee begins on Dec. 24 with the Opening of the Holy Door of Saint Peter’s Basilica, and runs through Jan. 6.
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