Jasmin El Kordi, left, and Dr. Kan Cao, right, are the CEO and chief scientific officer of Mblue Labs, which formulates a line of 11 anti-aging Bluelene products. Last year the U.S. Department of Commerce named the University of Maryland portfolio company one of America’s top 100 small businesses. Photo courtesy of Mblue Labs

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As John Lennon once sang, “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans.”

Scientist and college professor Dr. Kan Cao had spent most of her career studying a rare disease, progeria, which causes premature aging in children.

Eleven years ago, in her research lab at the University of Maryland, Cao noticed something unusual: Cells with misshapen, diseased nuclei suddenly looked plump and healthy when accidentally exposed to a common lab stain called methylene blue.

“That happens in scientific research a lot,” Cao said in an interview with the Beacon. “We want to research A, have a hypothesis, but in the end, we discover B.”

First, she published her findings on progeria. Then she did what most scientists do: asked another lab to repeat the experiment.

The other lab “actually observed the same thing,” Cao recalled. “Then I became more serious” about methylene blue, both to extend the lives of those with progeria and to preserve the skin cells of people as they age normally.

When Cao told the university about her findings, they were as excited as she was. Its Ventures program, which helps the school’s faculty and students commercialize their research breakthroughs, paired her with an alum, Maryland entrepreneur Jasmin El Kordi, as her CEO.

Today their company, Mblue Labs, has almost a dozen products in its Bluelene skincare line. Now in their seventh year, they opened their own warehouse and logistics office in Beltsville, Maryland, in September.

“We’re not a beauty company,” said El Kordi. “We’re a scientific company that made an incredible discovery that reverses human aging.”

Scientific background

Cao, who grew up in China, received her undergraduate degree in biology in Nanjing. She moved to Maryland to attend graduate school at Johns Hopkins.

With a Ph.D. in biology, Cao began her postdoc in genomics at the National Institutes of Health in 2005. That’s when Francis Collins, longtime director of NIH, tapped her to start researching progeria. In his lab, Cao’s experiments were “exquisitely designed and beautifully conducted,” Collins told the University of Maryland.

Cao became one of the country’s leading researchers on the disease and continued that research at UMD’s Department of Cell Biology and Molecular Genetics, where she would discover the effects of methylene blue.

Magic molecule

Invented in 1876 by a German chemist, methylene blue is a type of salt that can pass through both fats and water.

“If it gets into your skin, it’s very soluble — it can go through lipid, it can go through water — so it gets all the way to the cells, to the mitochondria inside your cells, and it comes in and acts as a natural antioxidant,” Cao said.

Over the years, doctors have used methylene blue to treat malaria, cancer, septic shock and other diseases. A handful of studies suggest it may even treat Alzheimer’s disease.

“We believe methylene blue is a magic molecule, and anti-aging is only one of its functions,” Cao said.

More commonly, though, surgeons and lab technicians use it as a dye.

That’s how Cao’s lab discovered “quite by accident,” she said, that methylene blue had anti-aging properties. After an undergraduate student cross-contaminated the skin samples, he noticed that the cells had improved.

“It helped the progeria, and it helped the healthy control samples as well,” Cao said, noting that the healthy skin cells were from people of all ages.

By the end of 2017, Cao began making prototypes of facial cream, experimenting with different scents like lavender and rose and giving them to friends as holiday gifts.

“My lab was smelling very good during that time,” she said.

Many of the recipients asked for more — an early sign of success.

Made in the USA

Just before Mblue Labs’ official launch, TV star Kevin Harrington of ABC’s Shark Tank endorsed the woman-owned company. Since then, it has sold its Bluelene products on Amazon and through its website, bluelene.com, growing by 40% to 80% year over year.

“We have a really good product that works, and so we are able to retain our customers at a rate of 65.2%, which is tremendous in the industry. So, customers stay with us because our product works,” El Kordi said. “There’s no wild marketing. We really deliver what we promise.”

As Mblue Labs enters its eighth year, the woman- and immigrant-owned company based in Bethesda is making significant ripples in the marketplace. Last year, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce included it on its list of the top 100 small businesses in America.

One of the secrets of its success has been the University of Maryland’s well-appointed lab. Cao’s research is funded in part by Maryland Industrial Partnerships. Mblue Labs was able to launch with just $150,000 from TEDCO, Maryland Technology Development Corporation.

“We’re very fortunate to be a University of Maryland portfolio company — and they do own a small part of the company,” El Kordi said. “Part of it is having the lab. We have our own scientists in the lab doing the work, but you can imagine how expensive it would be to build such a lab on our own.”

‘Wild West’ competitors

In the meantime, the University of Maryland secured a U.S. patent on the topical use of methylene blue, which it shares with Mblue Labs. Unfortunately that patent hasn’t given the company sole control over the common ingredient. If you search Amazon for methylene blue, for instance, you’ll find all kinds of oils and creams containing it, not just Bluelene products.

“It’s really the Wild West, so companies will go and use our ingredient; they really don’t care that there is a patent,” El Kordi said.

Other “nefarious actors,” as she calls them, simply add more methylene blue to their products, regardless of the potential side effects (a smurf-like blue tint to skin).

“They’ve formulated outside our patent range, which means they’re giving you more methylene blue than is really good for you,” El Kordi said.

However, going to court can cost tens of millions of dollars. With little protection for her discovery, Cao has accepted the competition as a form of validation of her work.

“As a scientific researcher, I have to say, it’s rewarding to see people find that, oh, methylene blue really is useful,” she said. “When we first talked about it back in 2018, everybody was like, ‘What’s methylene blue?’”

A strong bond

Meanwhile, Cao continues her research on progeria. Her most recent findings, published last year in the Aging Cell journal, may help patients live longer.

“It’s a lot of hard work,” Cao admitted, but that work has benefited others. “My research is doing well. The company is doing well. I feel very happy and satisfied.”

With 11 products on the market and several others in the pipeline, the two women have formed a bond that makes their company stronger.

When they met in 2018, Cao said, “I feel like we clicked. Nowadays, she said, “Sometimes I end up talking to Jasmin more than I talk to my husband. We talk a lot, just as mothers.”

Cao and El Kordi, who each have two grown sons, may have fewer wrinkles than most working mothers. Both of them, of course, use Bluelene products every day.

For more information, visit bluelene.com or call (800) 988-8068.