The Galago Peptide Complex is named for a small primate of the Atlantic Forest — but the active itself comes from a seed. The seed grows on a fruit that the galago eats, scatters, and is, in some sense, responsible for keeping in circulation.
“You don’t pay for the seed. You pay for the knowledge of which seed, and when.”
What’s in the seed
The seed oil contains an unusually high concentration of a peptide we have catalogued as Galago Peptide-1. On the skin, this peptide demonstrates two effects we have measured rigorously in our Aalen laboratory.
It up-regulates aquaporin-3 expression in keratinocytes, drawing water back into the surface layers — measurable within seven days of consistent use. And it signals at the fibroblast level for collagen-I synthesis, slower, visible at thirty days, cumulative across a course.
We isolated the peptide in late 2024, working from a fraction one of the cooperative’s elders had pointed us at — a specific portion of the seed’s oil that her grandmother had told her was the part you keep for the face, not for the hand. We tested fractions for six months before we found the one she meant.
It is a single peptide, not a complex. We have not split it, we have not modified it, we have not synthesised a more efficient analogue. The molecule that does the work is the same one the galago has been moving through that forest for as long as there have been galagos.
The Atlantic Forest, what’s left of it
The Atlantic Forest — Mata Atlântica — is one of the most biodiverse and most depleted habitats on earth. Less than 12% of its original cover remains. Within that fragment, hundreds of plant species are known only to the indigenous and traditional communities that have lived alongside them for generations. The seed at the heart of L’Essence de Galago is one of those, and the partnership we keep is the only reason it stays in the jar.
How we source it
We do not harvest in the wild. We work with a small partnership of seven families in São Paulo state who steward a stand of the fruit’s parent trees, harvest the fallen fruit at the end of each rainy season, and process the seeds by hand.
Our partnership is registered under Brazil’s biodiversity framework, and a fixed percentage of every jar sold returns to the community. We do not negotiate that percentage. We do not get a vote in how the families distribute the funds among themselves either; they told us, politely and firmly, that they would prefer we did not.
L’Essence de Galago is our entry to the cabinet because it is the cream we believe everyone benefits from. It is not the most active jar — that is A. Gambiae Venom. But it is the most-used jar, hand-finished into 2,000 numbered jars per batch for as long as the seven families in São Paulo continue the harvest.
When the harvest stops — because the families decide, or because the forest does — we will stop making L’Essence de Galago. We will not source a substitute seed from a different valley. The seed is not the active. The seed-and-the-families-and-the-forest are the active.
— with care.