Happy Tuesday and welcome back to Early Access by Coeus Collective: the newsletter where we do the sourcing and you get the deal. If you were celebrating Easter, Passover, or just the sunny start of spring, we hope you had a great past week.

Last week, we told you about Vitalis Regenerative Materials, a biotech startup building solutions for tissue repair in sports medicine applications. Today, we're shifting gears to a different kind of tissue: adipose (more commonly referred to as fat). Sable, a science-driven beauty company, is developing the first topical cream that directly shrinks fat cells.

In an economy increasingly driven by GLP-1 use, a topical cream resulting in a similar outcome could present a massive opportunity. Let’s get under the skin of Sable.

As we age, fat cells don't multiply. They enlarge up to 4x their original size, becoming metabolically sluggish and increasingly resistant to diet and exercise. Sable’s product does not tighten skin temporarily, or create the optical illusion of a slimmer silhouette, but instead directly targets fat at the cellular level.

Sable is a New York-based company operating at the intersection of biotech and beauty that has developed a topical body cream that actually reduces the volume of fat cells.

The modern body care aisle is full of promises. Products like firming creams, sculpting serums, and contouring gels are typically built using the same handful of ingredients, like caffeine and green tea. However, these typical ingredients do not address the underlying biology of why stubborn fat exists in the first place.

Sable does. The product’s core ingredient, currently referred to as SBL-001, is a bioengineered nanomaterial originally developed at Columbia University Medical Center that penetrates fat cells and directly inhibits lipid synthesis. In preclinical studies, it demonstrated up to a 70% reduction in fat cell volume, making waves in the quest for a new category of localized, non-invasive fat reduction.

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Now, back to Sable!

As Ozempic, Wegovy, and other GLP-1s become mainstream lifestyle tools, they are creating a new aesthetic category. People losing significant weight are now looking for tools to maintain and refine their transformations. The prestige beauty market is rushing to respond to the creation of this market, but the first wave of products in it has been largely underwhelming, delivering reformulated firming creams dressed up with clinical-sounding language. 

The broader market context reinforces the urgency. The global slimming cream market sits at over $7 billion, and is growing at roughly 10% annually. And this market sits within a $188 billion global skincare market that is growing even faster. 

Fat cells are now understood to be biologically active endocrine organs: a scientific recognition that has fueled both pharmaceutical and consumer interest in adipose tissue as a target. The convergence of that biological understanding, a massive GLP-1-driven behavioral shift, and rising consumer demand for evidence-based body care creates a window that didn't exist five years ago. Sable delivers a differentiated product that could close this gap, especially because its product is grounded in preclinical evidence.

Sable was developed by Turret Capital, and is currently backed by the global deep-tech and life sciences venture firm SOSV at the pre-seed stage. They recently completed the SOSV NY program (formerly known as IndieBio).

Sable is entering the market holding an exclusive license from Columbia University Medical Center covering all uses of SBL-001 in aesthetic, cosmetic, and metabolic health fields to selectively target and shrink adipose tissue.

That IP position is further protected by two PCT patent filings. The company is projecting a product launch in the second half of 2026, and already has a retail partnership with Cos Bar in the works.

Daniel Chai, M.D. (Founder & CEO) is the Managing Partner of Turret Capital, which developed Sable. At Turret, he has built a track record of identifying and commercializing breakthrough healthcare technologies. A Columbia-trained physician with prior experience at Citadel, Chai brings an unusual combination of scientific credibility, financial rigor, and operator experience to Sable.

Chai has assembled a strong leadership team to help him build Sable. Across business development, product development, and brand marketing, the team carries direct experience building and scaling companies at some of the most recognized names in pharma and prestige beauty.

Sable’s current competitors all rely on ingredients that act primarily as temporary skin-firming agents rather than agents of biological change. They address the surface, not the cell. Sable's SBL-001 is a key differentiator, and the Columbia licensing agreement gives them a secure scientific backstop that no competitor in the space currently has.

Beyond the science, Sable’s structural choices indicate a promising future. The decision to develop via a non-FDA cosmeceutical pathway is deliberate. By formulating SBL-001 as a cosmetic-grade ingredient rather than pursuing a drug approval, Sable sidesteps the years of regulatory process and capital burn that would otherwise stand between the product and its launch.

One risk worth noting is the translation gap between preclinical efficacy and real-world consumer results. A 70% reduction in fat cell volume demonstrated in a lab setting is a compelling data point, but if early users don't feel a visible difference, the statistics won't be enough to hold them. Consumer expectations in the beauty space are notoriously high and impatient.  

In conclusion, Sable has built a differentiated foundation with exclusive IP, credible institutional science, and an experienced team. But as a pre-revenue biotech startup, their future ultimately hinges upon real consumer results and the speed at which they can capitalize on the massive market opportunity that exists at this current moment.

Sable is currently raising a $2.5M pre-seed round, of which $1.8M has already been committed.

If you would like to get to know Sable further, we have got you covered. Join our exclusive network for prospective Sable supporters by filling out this 30-second form. If you do so, we will follow up with you to provide further detail!

(Please fill out the form even if you already did so in a previous newsletter, as we have a new form each week so that we can keep each Early Access startup’s network separate.)

About Us

This newsletter was written by Coeus Collective Co-Founders Antonio Di Meglio & Leon Li, alongside team member Dahlia Mankovich.

Thank you for reading and being a part of our community! The best way to support our work is to follow our @CoeusCollective social media pages, subscribe to our YouTube channel, and take part in our newsletter referral program.

If you make three referrals to our newsletter, we will send you a free Coeus Collective owl logo notebook. Perhaps this could be the notebook you use to track the effectiveness of Sable if you give the product a try post-launch?