2026 China Cosmetics Conference | Laibo: Medical-Research Co-Creation Drives the Advancement of Chinese Botanical Skincare
Event Date: August 6‑7, 2026
Venue: Powerlong Museum, Shanghai
Theme: PRESENCE
The 2026 (19th) China Cosmetics Conference was successfully held at the Powerlong Museum in Shanghai. Co-hosted by Pinguan and the CiE Beauty Innovation Exhibition, the conference focused on the cultural subjectivity and unique industry competitiveness of Chinese beauty (C‑Beauty) in the context of globalization, bringing together sociologists, artists, entrepreneurs, and entire supply chain industry professionals for in-depth exchanges and discussions. Livepro Cosmeceuticals participated in the conference with the core theme of "Medical-Research Co-Creation Drives the Evolution of Chinese Botanical Skincare." Chairman Li Chengliang delivered a keynote speech titled "From Herbal Experience to Scientific Evidence: Medical-Research Co-Creation Drives the Evolution of Chinese Botanical Skincare." Its subsidiary, Livepro Cosmeceuticals・Shengwei Pharmaceutical, was honored with the "C‑Beauty Smart Manufacturing Innovation Enterprise" award at the "China Cosmetics 2026 C‑Beauty Awards."
Botanical skincare with Chinese characteristics forms an essential part of building C‑Beauty's cultural identity and serves as a vital resource treasury for the functional skincare industry. Deeply cultivating the medical-research co-creation model in botanical skincare for 23 years, Livepro presented a core industry perspective at this conference: relying on medical-research co-creation to build a complete product and service system can drive the scientific upgrading of China's botanical skincare industry, empower domestic functional skincare brands to establish a core technological foundation and competitive moats, and assist brands in achieving a full-lifecycle developmental leap from project initiation and business stabilization to market momentum. Below is a summary of the core viewpoints from the keynote presentation.
1. Rapid Growth of China's Botanical Skincare Industry Over the Past Five Years
Chairman Li Chengliang pointed out that the domestic botanical skincare sector has achieved rapid growth over the past five years. China features diverse landforms spanning high-altitude regions, deserts, tropical rainforests, and other ecological environments, nurturing a vast array of distinctive authentic botanical resources and ranking third globally in plant resource abundance. At the same time, it possesses a traditional Chinese medicine herbal theoretical framework passed down for millennia, providing a profound empirical foundation for botanical skincare. This constitutes the core competitive edge that distinguishes Chinese botanical skincare from overseas skincare systems.
With the gradual implementation of the digital regulatory framework for the cosmetics industry since 2021, the industry's innovation ecosystem has continuously improved, and marketing and content communication models have kept evolving. Leading domestic botanical skincare brands—represented by CHANDO, Forest Cabin, DR.PLANT, and Half-Acre Floral Field—continue to grow stronger, while numerous emerging brands in the segment have also earned market recognition, establishing a solid foundation and strong developmental confidence for the industry's overall growth.
2. Broad Industry Opportunities Met with Real Challenges for Scientific Botanical Skincare
While the botanical skincare segment currently offers substantial market potential, the industry remains in an "empirical herbal phase" and faces several common pain points: most brands struggle to identify the core active components of botanical raw materials, harmful impurity thresholds, and dose-response relationships; the safety and stability of botanical raw materials are difficult to control precisely; and a comprehensive chain of evidence for safety and efficacy is lacking. As a result, the industry widely faces trust dilemmas, quality dilemmas, and differentiation barriers.
The next developmental milestone for the industry is entering the "scientific evidence phase." Transitioning into this phase requires the industry to systematically address key challenges, including plant variety selection, active component identification, mechanism target analysis, dose-response relationship establishment, and stable, controllable raw material quality, thereby truly achieving verifiable product safety and efficacy. Implementing scientific botanical skincare requires sustained R&D investment, specialized talent pools, and extensive experimental data support, presenting relatively high technical barriers to entry. Chairman Li Chengliang projected that the botanical skincare industry will eventually progress toward a "scientific engineering phase": by leveraging stress cultivation, targeted organ culture, cell engineering, genetic engineering, and other technologies, it can overcome natural growth constraints and exploit plant-derived bioactive substances to serve skin health in a more controlled manner. This phase will represent the long-term developmental trajectory of the industry.
3. Six Core Stages: Building a Medical-Research Co-Creation Botanical Skincare Development System
Integrating years of R&D translation practice, Livepro proposed six core stages for the scientific validation of botanical skincare: Resource Selection, Component Enrichment, Precision Screening, Formulation Optimization, Scientific Validation, and Smart Manufacturing, establishing a seamless scientific development pathway from botanical resources to finished products.
1. Resource Selection: Controlling Botanical Raw Material Quality at the Source
At the raw material end, Livepro collaborates with scientific research institutions such as the Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences to carry out targeted development for distinctive domestic botanical resources such as lotus and macrofungi. Simultaneously, it connects with over 100 authentic medicinal herb supply bases across China, strictly adhering to GAP and GSP medicinal herb quality control standards during raw material procurement and screening to ensure baseline ingredient quality at the source.
2. Component Enrichment: Proprietary Technologies Enable High-Efficiency Extraction of Botanical Actives
Relying on proprietary patented processes to achieve functional component enrichment, core technologies include TFF tangential flow filtration nano-plant vesicle separation technology, ultrasonic circulating percolation extraction technology, multiphase multi-state digital fermentation technology, and liquid nitrogen freeze-drying analytical drying technology, with multiple technologies granted national patents.
Among these, the TFF tangential flow filtration nano-plant vesicle separation technology, jointly developed by Livepro and Professor Ding Xiaolei from Shanghai University School of Medicine, enables targeted screening of plant vesicles of varying particle sizes and realizes scaled commercial production.
Livepro has long conducted collaborative industry-academia-research-medical R&D. Partner research teams include Professor Xu Jing's team at Qilu University of Technology, Professor Hu Zhenlin's team at Shanghai University School of Medicine, Professor Ye Xiyun's team at East China Normal University, and Professor Zhu Quangang's team at Shanghai Skin Disease Hospital. Acer truncatum seed oil is a new cosmetic ingredient jointly developed by Livepro and Professor Xu Jing's team at Qilu University of Technology, which has completed new cosmetic ingredient filing with the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA). Internal laboratory test data indicates that this ingredient contains >5.6% nervonic acid and is rich in very-long-chain fatty acids, demonstrating application potential in anti-aging and skin barrier repair (Note: Actual ingredient efficacy is subject to third-party CMA test data).
3. Precision Screening: Multi-Platform Evaluation of Active Component Efficacy
Livepro has built a comprehensive in vitro efficacy screening platform, establishing various skin-related cell test models and equipping it with imported analytical testing equipment such as microplate readers, fluorescence microscopes, and QPCR systems to support preliminary screening of active substances. In parallel, it partners with medical institutions such as the Skin Physiology Research Center of Shanghai University School of Medicine and Shanghai Skin Disease Hospital to co-build a medical-research co-creation efficacy screening platform for multidimensional active ingredient evaluations.
4. Formulation Optimization: Resolving the Five Major Application Bottlenecks of Botanical Ingredients
Natural botanical active substances face five major challenges in formulation applications: insufficient transdermal absorption, poor sensory experience, irritation, poor stability, and limited solubility, which are also the primary sources of quality risks in many botanical products. Relying on formulation technologies such as phospholipid supramolecular systems, liposome encapsulation, cyclodextrin inclusion, liquid crystal emulsification, and solid lipid nanoparticles, Livepro optimizes formulations at the molecular level, improving the safety, transdermal bioavailability, and sensory profile of botanical ingredients.
5. Scientific Validation: Integrating Medicine and Research to Reinforce Compliance and Efficacy Evidence Chains
Livepro established its raw material and formulation validation system as early as the 2010s. In 2021, it founded its wholly owned testing subsidiary, Meigu Livepro Testing, securing CMA inspection and testing certification to support internal R&D iterations and provide external partner brands with product testing and regulatory filing compliance services.
Concurrently, it conducts ongoing clinical validation partnerships with several medical institutions, including Huashan Hospital, Shanghai Skin Disease Hospital, Beijing Friendship Hospital, Renji Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, and Shanghai Fengxian District Central Hospital, completing human-level scientific evaluations of products.
6. Smart Manufacturing: Customized Full-Scale Commercial Production
Formulation development is undertaken by the Oriental Beauty Valley Functional Skincare Research Institute, while commercial mass production is executed by Shengwei Pharmaceutical, an enterprise recognized as a demonstration-level smart factory in Shanghai. It implements a customized development model of one customized formula per product and one dedicated SOP per product to ensure formula stability and consistent quality across batch productions.
Chairman Li Chengliang summarized the value of the six stages: Resource Selection and Component Enrichment empower botanical skincare products with a high starting point and robust internal technical core, escaping low-end homogenous competition; Precision Screening and Formulation Optimization make product efficacy explainable, traceable, and scientifically verifiable; Scientific Validation and Smart Manufacturing safeguard the product commercialization threshold, enabling long-term development under the dual scrutiny of the market and science.
4. Livepro's Full-Chain Product Development Service System via Medical-Research Co-Creation
Through more than two decades of strategic development, Livepro has established a highly autonomous, end-to-end ODM/CDMO service system. Grounded in the aforementioned six development stages and integrated with an extensive medical-research collaboration network, it has formed comprehensive botanical skincare product development service capabilities. The company's four core business divisions serve as the service foundation, while the translation and operation of medical-research achievements serve as the project implementation hub, collaborating with experts in epidemiology, clinical medicine, skin physiology, micro-formulation, and cosmetic evaluation to collectively support product R&D and iteration.
Upon project initiation, a dedicated project service team is formed—comprising personnel across project management, product development, formulation research, and other roles—to deliver an integrated project plan covering market research, product planning, scientific resource coordination, R&D translation, multi-level efficacy validation, quality control production, and scientific communication. Project progress is synchronized transparently, relieving partner brands from coordinating fragmented medical and research resources, thereby reducing communication costs and project execution uncertainties.
Disclaimer: Certain processes and raw material performance metrics mentioned in this article are internal laboratory test results of the enterprise and do not represent third-party CMA testing conclusions; new cosmetic ingredient and product filing information is subject to public notices on the official National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) platform; individual skin application results may vary.
5. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
Q1: What is medical-research co-created botanical skincare, and how does it differ from traditional botanical skincare development models?
A: Medical-research co-created botanical skincare is an R&D model that systematically integrates botanical resource research, active ingredient screening, skin physiology research, formulation technology development, efficacy evaluation, and scaled manufacturing. Compared to traditional development methods that rely primarily on empirical herbal experience and simple formulation use, medical-research co-creation places greater emphasis on scientific research, safety evaluations, efficacy validation, and quality control of botanical active ingredients, helping brands establish a more scientifically backed, verifiable, and traceable product R&D system.
Q2: What key challenges must be addressed for botanical skincare products to transition from empirical herbal practice to scientific evidence?
A: The scientific upgrading of botanical skincare requires addressing six key challenges: scientific screening of botanical resources, identification of core active components, elucidation of mechanisms of action and biological targets, establishment of dose-response relationships, control of raw material safety and stability, and scientific validation of product efficacy. Through systematic research and standardized testing, enterprises can progressively establish a robust chain of evidence from raw material sourcing and compositional analysis to end-product efficacy evaluations, enhancing R&D precision and quality controllability.
Q3: What are the core advantages of Livepro Cosmeceuticals' botanical skincare development system?
A: Centered on the six core stages of Resource Selection, Component Enrichment, Precision Screening, Formulation Optimization, Scientific Validation, and Smart Manufacturing, Livepro Cosmeceuticals has built an end-to-end development system ranging from botanical raw material research to scaled product manufacturing. Combining proprietary botanical active extraction and separation technologies, multi-platform efficacy screening capabilities, formulation optimization technologies, CMA-certified inspection and testing services, and smart manufacturing capabilities, the enterprise provides partner brands with botanical ingredient development, formulation R&D, efficacy evaluation, regulatory compliance support, and customized manufacturing services.
Q4: How can brand enterprises develop differentiated, competitive botanical skincare products through medical-research co-creation?
A: Brand enterprises can start from the skin requirements and market positioning of their target audience, identify distinctive botanical resources with commercial potential, and further execute active component research, formulation optimization, safety evaluations, and efficacy validation. On this basis, by integrating ingredient innovation, formulation technology, sensory experience, and scientific communication, they can construct a product matrix with coherent R&D logic and distinctive advantages. Partnering with an ODM/CDMO enterprise that features full-chain R&D translation capabilities helps integrate scientific research resources, shorten development cycles, and reduce the complexity of project communication and mass-production handover.
Q5: How does Livepro Cosmeceuticals provide partner brands with one-stop services from product concept to mass production and commercial launch?
A: Relying on its end-to-end
ODM/CDMO service infrastructure, Livepro Cosmeceuticals offers partner brands market research, product planning, scientific resource coordination, raw material and formulation R&D, efficacy validation, regulatory compliance support, quality control, and scaled contract manufacturing. Once a project kicks off, the enterprise deploys a specialized service team to coordinate project management, product development, and formulation research functions, ensuring coordinated execution across R&D, testing, and production phases. Through bespoke development and standardized production management, it helps brands enhance development efficiency and accelerates the journey of botanical skincare products from creative concepts to successful commercialization.
