Elm Biosciences, the skincare company co-founded by Martha Stewart and board-certified dermatologist Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali, is launching Elemental Lip Serum on September 22 at $45, in four shades: Blush, Petal, Mocha, and Clear.

The product is described as a balm-oil hybrid built around peptides, antioxidants, shea butter, squalane, and what the brand calls a deep hydration complex. Peptides are short chains of amino acids used in cosmetic formulas as conditioning and signaling ingredients, and their inclusion here is the reason a lip balm lands on a peptide news desk rather than a beauty column.

The pitch is lip care as skin care

Elm's argument is that lips are one of the most overlooked parts of a beauty routine and deserve the same treatment logic as facial skin. That framing is doing real work commercially: it moves a tinted balm out of the makeup aisle, where $45 is a hard sell, and into treatment, where it is unremarkable.

The serum is positioned to address visible signs of lip aging while delivering hydration, comfort, and a sheer tint. In other words, wearable color with treatment claims attached, which is the most crowded corner of the category right now.

What the study actually was

Elm Biosciences points to a dermatologist-supervised perception study involving 54 women who used the product for seven days. A perception study asks users what they noticed, which is a different kind of evidence from an instrumented measure of hydration or lip texture, and seven days is a short window for anything described as long-term care.

No outcome figure from that study appears in the coverage, and the brand's own framing concedes that individual results can vary. For a formula sold on visible signs of lip aging, the absence of a published result is the most informative detail available.

The dermatologist network

The company says its product development is informed by a network of more than 350 dermatologists, scientists, and researchers. That is a credentialing claim, not a data claim, and the two get conflated often enough in this category to be worth separating.

Bottom line

What Elm has launched is a peptide-containing tinted lip treatment at $45 with a seven-day user-perception study behind it. Whether the formula does anything measurable to lip skin over months rather than a week is a question nobody has published an answer to yet.