It Starts With A Different Question

Since the 1800s, the deodorant industry has really only ever asked one question: how do we get rid of odor? The answers have all pointed in the same three directions: kill the bacteria on your skin, block the sweat that feeds them, or cover the smell with something else.

These were created at a time when we didn’t fully understand the biology of body odor let alone other important facets of our personal scent. And still today, none of those approaches have changed much in over a century, and none of them asks a more interesting question: where does your natural scent come from, and can we help it become something you actually want to smell like?

That's the question behind Base Scent.

Your skin already has its own scent signature, produced in part by the trillions of microbes that live there: the skin microbiome. That ecosystem isn't something to eliminate. It's something to work with. Base Scent is built on the idea that the goal of “smelling good” doesn’t start with a scentless body or a masked one: it's a body that smells like the best version of itself.

Where Odor Actually Comes From

Here's something most people don't know: fresh sweat has almost no smell on its own. The odor most of us associate with body odor is actually a byproduct of biochemistry: specific bacteria on the skin's surface feeding on odorless compounds in sweat and, through their own metabolism, converting them into scented molecules.

Different bacteria can produce different molecules, depending on different conditions, and those molecules have very different smells. Some are the classic smelly notes people associate with [bad] body odor - cheese, onion, sulfur, sharp, acidic. But others are mild, green, or even pleasant. 

It isn't that bacteria are "good" or "bad", it's that each person has their own unique microbiome, with its own metabolic habits, and those habits produce a wide, varied bouquet of scent chemistry that adds up to what we perceive as someone's personal scent.

So what if we have been looking at the problem the wrong way this whole time? If odor is a matter of what specific molecules are being produced, then the real opportunity isn't to sterilize the skin, but rather shift which molecules get made in the first place to shape the scent of our skin. 

Our Approach: Nurture the Ecosystem

Base Scent is built around a prebiotic ingredient technology developed over 5 years of microbiome research. Our premise can be understood through a simple analogy: When we eat a healthy diet, we feel good, act good. When we eat a junk food diet, we tend to feel crappy.  There is a lot of evidence that different diet shape/alter the gut microbiome, which has been linked to health. The same applies to the skin: shape the skin microbiome to help produce a desired outcome. The premise behind this work was how we could nourish this ecosystem into a state where we would be producing the scent compounds we wanted, and not the ones we didn’t want. 

The additional advantage of this approach is that because it is focused on nourishment and balance (rather than killing or starving the microbes), this is a more sustainable and stable state for the microbiome. 

In practice, that meant years of foundational science before a single formula was finalized. Here is what we did: 

• Starting in February of 2021 we first built a reference library. We collected and sequenced (via whole-genome sequencing) the specific bacterial strains that live on the skin in a variety of sites, and mapped their metabolic pathways to understand all the biological "machinery" they have to produce scent molecules. 

• Second, we learned their behavior. Through high-throughput screening, basically thousands of tests across different nutrients, temperatures, and pH conditions, we studied how these microbial communities responded to different inputs. This process took about a year and by February of 2022 we had a list of candidate ingredients for screening further.

• Third, we did a lot of modeling and predicting. We took the data from the previous step and trained a machine-learning model to predict which precise combination of ingredients could nudge the ecosystem in the direction we wanted. This finalized list of blends was completed around July 2022 and each blend was then tested, refined, and retested against real microbial communities. There were many iterations of formulation up to July 2024.

• Lastly, we validated on real skin in August 2022 and November 2022. The most promising formulas moved into in-vivo studies on real people, real underarms, tracked over time plus third-party consumer perception testing. More blend optimization and internal testing was conducted through July 2024 to better understand the mechanism and formulation guidelines.

The result was a standalone active ingredient blend that requires no fragrance masking, no bactericide, and no extreme pH to do its job. And it doesn’t erase how you smell, it makes you smell your best on your own whether alongside your deodorant or without it. 

What Scents We Actually Measured

If you were to be asked: What do you smell like? Your default answer might not be positive. Our association with personal scent is typically a negative one because body odor is mostly what we think of. But what scent molecules does our skin actually make? Are the compounds associated with [bad] body odor all there is? No. 

We wanted to answer a more direct question because today’s science can tell us so much more: what scent compounds are actually made by someone's skin environment, and can we shift that with precision?

Over the course of this research, we spent a lot of time measuring the scent molecules produced by various skin microbes through gas chromatography–mass spectrometry (GC-MS). It was one of the key ways that we tested our blends and improved our learning models. This gave us something most odor products never bother to check: a direct, molecule-by-molecule readout of what actually changed.

Yes, there are “smelly” compounds that we associate with body odor. And we studied those. They include: 

• 3-methyl-2-hexenoic acid (3M2H): often described as "goaty" or "hircine," and one of the most recognizable and easily detected contributors to underarm odor.

• Hexanoic and nonanoic acid:  fatty, cheesy, "old grease" notes.

• Isovaleric acid: pungent, sour, cheesy, and fatty

• Thioalcohols such as 3-Methyl-3-sulfanylhexan-1-ol (3M3SH): sharp, onion-like; measured through a colorimetric dye assay.

• 3-hydroxy-3-methylhexanoic acid (HMHA): cumin-like, cheesy, rancid; not directly measured in our studies

But there were also compounds that are neutral or not necessarily unpleasant as default, some include: 

• Hexanal: Green and aldehydic

• Indole: Used in small amounts in fragrance reads as jasmine-like, white floral note. But in higher amounts can be an animalic note that reads as unmistakably unpleasant.

• Acetic acid: a sharp, vinegar-like sourness, but can also be used in fragrance to give a sparkling effect to a scent. 

What we sought to do was reduce the scent molecules that are “distractors” from the neutral and positive scent molecules we produce. 

What We Found: The Molecules Shifted

Across this early study in June 2023, a broad range of compounds showed a meaningful reduction on the side treated with our formula relative to the placebo side, not just one or two "hero" molecules, but dozens of the chemical signals that make up scent. 

But the shift wasn't limited to the molecules people would call "bad." It also touched compounds with much gentler character, for example, 2-nonanol, described in fragrance literature as waxy, green, creamy, with citrus and slight fruity undertones that increases as we age and 2-ethyl-1-hexanol, which is a softer citrusy floral note that we also found increased. 

That one is a good reminder that personal scent isn't a story about one villain molecule; it's a story about a whole chemical fingerprint moving in a more favorable, wearable direction.

A methodological note for transparency: this June 2023 study focused its reporting the compounds that changed by more than 25%. The malodorous compounds moved in the direction of reduction; one compound,  2-ethyl-1-hexanol, which has a citrus, fresh, floral, oily, and sweet profile, actually increased by more than 25% on average, and others remained the same. That's an encouraging signal, but it's also a reason we're continuing to build out a fuller inventory of the total scent profile (including which of the more neutral or pleasant compounds hold steady or increase).

Beyond Counting Bacteria: Confirming the Mechanism

To make sure this was really a story about changed behavior, not just changed headcount, we went a layer deeper than population counts. In 2023, we spent a lot of time studying a mock community of skin microbes in-vitro coupled with in-vivo testing on internal participants. We looked at which genes were actually switched on or off inside the microbial community after treatment with our blend. By combining RNA sequencing on mock communities and metagenomic DNA sequencing on samples from participants in internal studies, we could get a better understanding of how microbial genes were changing and relating to changes in odor production.

The pattern was consistent with the story we wanted to tell and supported by results from our mock community and internal in-vivo study results: genes tied to converting sweat molecules into strong-smelling compounds, in particular, several of the enzymes responsible for producing 3M2H, HMHA, and related thiol compounds, were measurably reduced in activity in both our mock community and after five days of use in our internal study, while genes associated with ordinary, healthy microbial activity (basic metabolism, cell maintenance) were unaffected or increased in the microbes we want to encourage. 

In other words, this reinforces that this isn’t about fighting with your biology by killing microbes, it's about changing what the existing population is doing.

Our collective learnings from our initial blend development was that the strengths of the microbiome and associated odor shifts varied by sex, with a clearer shift in men than in women. This led to our next stage of work to understand what might be missing.

While our initial research proved that shifting the microbiome’s scent profile was scientifically possible, those early trials were the technological foundation. Translating those foundational discoveries into the final Base Scent formula required a new phase of rigorous, targeted development to ensure it worked for everyone.

From First Proof to Final Formula

That early work told us something important: the underlying idea was real. Shifting the biochemistry of personal scent was possible, measurable, and repeatable. But a small, in-house study is a proof of concept, not a finished product, and it showed us exactly where our original formula still had room to grow. 

Some of the microbes most responsible for stronger odor notes weren't being addressed as consistently as others, and we didn't yet know how reliably the effect would hold across a broader range of people.

So we went back to the bench in April 2025, and started a new screening program. Using the same nutrient-screening and machine-learning approach that built the original formula, we tested a much wider set of ingredients, ultimately screening well over 150 individual compounds and hundreds of nutrient interactions. This expanded screening allowed us to consistently address the bacteria our first formula handled less well. New formulation work started in June 2025, and by October 2025 we had a finished targeted blend that was ready. 

That refinement effort became the technology inside Base Scent: the same core science, made more complete. The final formula was approved in January 2026.

Putting the Final Formula to the Test

The next step was to design a clinical study. In May 2026, we ran a 7-day clinical study with 25 participants, evaluated by two independent, trained expert graders performing blinded "sniff test" assessments under controlled conditions, not self-reported impressions. 

Participants first went through a 7-day washout period (an unscented soap only, no deodorant, antiperspirant, or other scented products) so the study could establish an honest baseline. That baseline was itself a qualifying bar: participants had to already show at least mild, noticeable odor to be admitted into the study. 

They then used Base Scent twice daily for 7 days and returned for a final evaluation by the same graders, timed 4 to 6 hours after their last application specifically so the results would reflect a real shift, not just the product masking things in the moment.

On the study's 5-point odor scale (0 = no detectable odor, 5 = overpowering), the average score dropped from 2.90 at baseline to 2.35 at Day 7, a statistically significant reduction. 68% of participants showed a measurable improvement.

What People Actually Noticed

Expert graders are one kind of proof. The other is whether people living their actual lives, through workouts, long days, everything in between, can feel the difference themselves. So alongside the clinical study, we ran an independent 14-day in-home consumer study with 102 participants who came in with real dissatisfaction with their current deodorant or antiperspirant, not people paid to say nice things.

For the first week, participants layered Base Scent into whatever routine they already had. For the second week, they used Base Scent alone, no backup deodorant, no fragrance on top. By Day 14:

• 79% said their baseline scent felt more neutral.

• 81% said they had more freedom to choose their own personal scent.

• 78% said they noticed less body odor.

• 77% said Base Scent helped their body smell good on its own, without needing to mask it with something else.

One participant summed it up more simply than any of our data could: "I was extremely nervous the first time I used it without deodorant to go to work... I was shocked I did not smell at all."

A note on precision, because we'd rather be exact than impressive: these numbers were tracked at both Day 7 and Day 14, and on nearly every measure, people's satisfaction and reported effectiveness kept climbing between the two check-ins. This isn't a product that makes a strong first impression and fades, it's one that seems to work better the longer people stay with it.

What's Next

This is the first new way to think about personal scent in almost 150 years. We are proud of this work and hope that it changes your experience with your personal scent. Here is where this science is still developing:

• We have strong evidence for which strong-smelling molecules go down. We're still building a complete picture of what happens to the full range of neutral and pleasant compounds 

• The strength of the effect appears to vary by sex and likely by individual skin chemistry; we're expanding our studies to understand that variation.

The Bottom Line

Body odor isn't something to eliminate, it's biochemistry to understand. Base Scent doesn't kill your microbiome or mask what it makes; it works with your skin's own ecosystem to shift the balance of what gets produced, molecule by molecule, so what's left is closer to your own natural scent, just without the notes that get in the way.