The MHF Foundation for Marine Biochemistry was founded in 2013 with a narrow mandate: to systematically catalogue bioactive metabolites produced by extremophile microorganisms in deep-ocean environments. By 2018 the Foundation had completed four prior survey expeditions — to the Indian Ocean, the Mariana Trench periphery, the Norwegian Sea, and the hydrothermal vent fields of the East Pacific Rise — cataloguing over 340 candidate compounds with varying degrees of commercial potential.
None of those compounds made it to market.
The 2018 Azores Deep Survey was the Foundation's fifth expedition, and arguably its least anticipated. The Mid-Atlantic Ridge — the survey target — had been extensively mapped by academic institutions since the 1970s. The scientific case for a new survey rested on a narrow hypothesis: that the specific hydrothermal vent field at approximately 38°N latitude, characterised by anomalously low-temperature effluent (87°C rather than the typical 200–350°C), might harbour microbial communities producing metabolites adapted to pressure without thermophilic extremes — a combination that could yield compounds with more tractable biochemistry for downstream application.
Aboard the Projeto Atlântico III
The survey vessel Projeto Atlântico III departed Ponta Delgada in the Azores on 3 October 2018, carrying a team of eleven scientists and technicians. Dr. Vera Solenne — then 36, five years post-PhD and recently appointed Principal Investigator at the MHF Foundation — led the biochemistry team. With her were two postdoctoral researchers, a bioinformatician, and a specialist ROV operator on secondment from the GEOMAR Helmholtz Centre for Ocean Research Kiel.
The expedition plan called for 21 days at sea, with ROV dives to eight pre-selected sampling coordinates. Weather delayed the first dive by 36 hours. By day 14, five of the eight target sites had been sampled and the preliminary cultures were, in Dr. Solenne's own words in her field notes, “unremarkable.”
“We were already adjusting the publication framing in our heads. Negative results from a well-designed survey are still publishable, still useful. I had drafted the opening paragraph of that paper, more or less. Then the ROV came back up with core MHF-7743.”
Sediment Core MHF-7743
Core sample MHF-7743 was retrieved on 17 October 2018 by the Foundation's VICTOR-class ROV from a depth of 3,847 metres, at the edge of a low-temperature hydrothermal vent field in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge vent complex designated MAR-38N. The core measured 34cm in length and was retrieved in a sealed titanium core barrel to prevent decompression contamination.
On initial examination under UV illumination during the standard shipboard screening protocol, the core exhibited an anomalous bioluminescent signature that the team had not encountered before: a persistent, faint blue autofluorescence at approximately 480nm wavelength — a property not previously documented in any known bathypelagic microorganism catalogued by the Foundation or in the broader scientific literature.
Dr. Solenne immediately isolated a 2g sub-sample for expedited analysis aboard ship. A second sub-sample was sealed under inert gas in cryo-storage at −80°C for integrity preservation. The remaining core was maintained in its sealed barrel pending return to the Geneva laboratory.
Core MHF-7743 — Field Data
Characterisation in Geneva
On return to the University of Geneva in November 2018, Dr. Solenne's team began systematic characterisation of the fluorescent compound using LC-MS/MS and NMR spectroscopy. Within three weeks, the primary structure was resolved: a cyclic peptide with nine amino acid residues, two disulfide bridges, and an unusual N-methylated leucine at position 4. The provisional molecular formula was assigned as C₄₁H₅₉N₉O₁₂S₂, with a molecular weight of 847.3 Daltons.
It was Prof. Hendrik Bauer of ETH Zürich — a specialist in transdermal biopolymer delivery who had collaborated with the Foundation on two prior surveys — who immediately flagged the significance of the molecular weight. At 847.3 Da, the compound fell below the 1,000 Da threshold for passive transdermal diffusion. Combined with its cyclic architecture — which provided exceptional stability against enzymatic degradation and pH variation — Prof. Bauer proposed that the compound might represent the first biologically active peptide with proven skin-layer penetration capability.
Ex-vivo penetration modelling was completed in January 2019 using excised human skin samples (cadaveric dermis, full-thickness, sourced from the Geneva University Hospital tissue bank under ethics approval GE-2018-00341). Results confirmed transdermal passage to the stratum spinosum — four epidermal layers beneath the surface — a depth no other topical peptide compound in the scientific literature had reached via passive diffusion.
Collagen Pathway Activity
The compound's biological activity at the stratum spinosum was characterised in in-vitro keratinocyte culture studies through late 2019. The key finding: Abyssolide-9™ (the name assigned by the Foundation team, reflecting its deep-sea origin and its position as the ninth candidate compound from the MHF-7743 extract) acts as a competitive, reversible inhibitor of prolyl hydroxylase domain enzymes PHD2 and PHD3 in differentiating keratinocytes, producing a downstream upregulation of collagen type I and type III synthesis.
Critically, this collagen synthesis pathway proved to be HIF-1α-independent — meaning it did not activate the hypoxic stress response that retinoids and aggressive chemical exfoliants trigger. The result was structural collagen synthesis without the inflammatory cascade that makes retinoid-class compounds difficult to tolerate.
Publication and Licensing
The full characterisation of Abyssolide-9™ was submitted for peer review in September 2019 and published in April 2020 in the Journal of Marine Extremophile Biochemistry, Vol. 14, Issue 2. The paper — “Structural and biological characterisation of a novel cyclic bioluminescent peptide from Bathypelagic microorganism strain MHF-7743: implications for transdermal delivery” — was co-authored by Dr. Vera Solenne and Prof. Hendrik Bauer, with contributions from three members of the survey team.
The MHF Foundation filed a patent application covering the compound and its cosmetic and pharmaceutical applications (CH/EP application, priority date January 2019). In Q3 2020, muheffdfura LLC acquired an exclusive cosmetic-use licence under that patent, beginning a 14-month formulation development program in collaboration with a Swiss cosmetic chemistry house.
LUMIVEX™ Restorative Serum — containing 0.3% Abyssolide-9™ concentrate, cold-processed at 4°C to prevent thermolytic degradation of the peptide bond — launched in 2023 as the sole commercial product formulated with the compound.
The Clinical Confirmation
Prior to launch, muheffdfura commissioned an independent double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial at the Lugano Institute of Dermoscopic Research, Switzerland (trial identifier: LIDR-2022-ABY9-001). Under lead investigator Dr. Matthias Orel, MD PhD, 144 participants aged 35–60 (Fitzpatrick skin types I–IV) completed a 28-day protocol of twice-daily application.
The primary outcome — 73.4% reduction in periorbital hyperpigmentation (p = 0.0031) — validated the in-vitro melanin-chromophore interference hypothesis that Dr. Solenne had proposed in the 2020 publication. Secondary outcomes included an 81.2% improvement in skin elasticity (p = 0.0019) and a 68.9% reduction in transepidermal water loss (p = 0.0047).
Dr. Solenne, reflecting on the five years between the shipboard discovery and the published clinical results:
“The 847.3 Da figure was always the key. Everything else — the collagen pathway, the chromophore interference, the autofluorescence at 480nm — those were extraordinary. But without the molecular weight, none of it matters topically. The ocean produced, by accident of extreme-pressure evolution, a peptide complex that human chemists have been trying to design for forty years. We just had to find it.”