Every ingredient we develop at Alternative Plants starts the same way: in a lab, with a plant, and a question, can we capture what makes it valuable without taking the plant itself? Years of work go into an extract before it ever leaves our facility, and honestly, the most rewarding moment for us isn't in the lab at all. It's the moment we see that ingredient land in a finished product on someone's shelf. That's exactly what's happened with DragonCell™, our biotechnologically cultivated extract of Northern dragonhead (Dracocephalum ruyschiana): FLOWE Skin has put their trust in it as they built their new Immunity Glow line, and we couldn't be prouder to see where it ended up.

Before we get into the ingredient itself, though, it's worth talking about the brand it's now part of,  because the philosophy behind FLOWE Skin is a big part of why this partnership makes sense to us.

A Different Philosophy: Working With Skin, Not Against It

FLOWE Skin puts it simply:

“Skin is already a living, functioning system. Our approach isn’t to fight the skin, ‘fix’ it, or constantly try to change it. Flowe Skin’s idea is to stand beside the skin, support its natural functions, help maintain its balance, and create the conditions in which skin can look and feel good long-term. Beauty, to us, isn’t about perfect skin,  it’s Let Your Wild Shine.”

Is this logical? From where we sit,  developing ingredients that are judged on skin barrier function, oxidative stress markers, and microbiome data- yes, and it's increasingly where the whole field is heading. Skin isn't a passive surface to be corrected; it's a self-regenerating ecosystem with its own barrier lipids, its own antioxidant defenses, and its own resident microbial community actively working to protect it. Skincare that fights that system- stripping, over-exfoliating, flooding skin with aggressive actives,  often creates the very sensitivity and imbalance it was meant to fix.

“The most sophisticated thing skincare can do is often the least dramatic: give skin what it needs to keep doing its job well.”

That's really the case for preventive skincare, which this philosophy supports in practice. Preventive care means reinforcing the barrier, antioxidant reserves, and hydration before damage accumulates, rather than trying to reverse visible damage afterward. The benefit is twofold: biologically, an intact barrier and balanced microbiome are simply more resilient to UV, pollution, and daily stress over time. Practically, it also means gentler, more consistent routines instead of a constant cycle of aggressive correction. It's a quieter story than “fixing” skin,  but it's the one backed by the biology, and it's exactly the kind of approach we want our ingredients supporting.

Inside the Formula: What's Actually in the Immunity Glow Products

Immunity Glow Serum Mist (100 ml) and Immunity Glow Cream (50 ml) are built around that same idea, in two textures. Reading through the INCI lists, as the team behind one of the actives inside them, but also just as formulation-minded scientists, a few things stood out.

The barrier-and-hydration backbone.  The mist pairs ceramides NP and NG, the same lipids skin uses to build its own barrier,  with hyaluronic acid, glycerin, sorbitol and inulin. That's not a random humectant cocktail; ceramides plus hyaluronic acid is close to a biomimetic approach, replenishing what the barrier is actually made of rather than just trapping water on the surface. The cream adds shea butter and grape seed oil for the lipid layer, which fits a richer, more occlusive texture.

The microbiome angle.  Both products lean on inulin (a prebiotic fibre that feeds beneficial skin bacteria) and, in the cream, lactobacillus and bifidobacterium ferments. Worth being precise here: these are typically ferment filtrates or lysates, not live bacteria surviving in a jar, but that's still meaningful, since it's the metabolites these bacteria produce (postbiotics) that tend to do the signalling work for barrier and microbiome balance, not the live cells themselves.

The botanical layer.  Red clover (Trifolium pratense) brings isoflavones associated with skin firmness; lady's mantle (Alchemilla vulgaris) is a traditional astringent and soothing extract; cornflower water (Centaurea cyanus) is a classic calming ingredient, often used for sensitive skin. Together with DragonCell, they build a consistent “calm and protect” story rather than a scattershot list of trending actives,  exactly the kind of formulation philosophy we like to see our ingredients sitting inside.

“My own favourite of the two is the mist. It’s such a light pleasure- the perfect addition to a day, something I toss in my bag on my way out the door, in between meetings and running through everyday tasks. In those moments when I need a second to just breathe, it’s become a small ritual: not only reaching for water to hydrate from the inside, but a spritz of the mist to hydrate my skin at the same time.”

 Aiga Mazurenko, Sales Project Director, Alternative Plants