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| Photo Courtesy : Katu.com. |
Does it sound like a plot in a High Tech Sci-Fi movie, or another fake claim in the world of anti-aging gimmicks? No, this is a reality made possible by researchers at MIT, Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Olivo Labs and Jennifer Aniston’s beauty company Living Proof reported in a recently published advanced online research paper in Nature Materials.
Study author
Daniel Anderson, an associate professor in MIT’s Department of Chemical
Engineering and a member of MIT’s Koch Institute for Integrative Cancer
Research and Institute for Medical Engineering and Science (IMES) said “It’s an
invisible layer that can provide a barrier, provide cosmetic improvement, and
potentially deliver a drug locally to the area that’s being treated. Those
three things together could really make it ideal for use in humans.”
According to
it, the ‘second skin’ is made of wearable crosslinked polymer layer (XPL) that
mimics the properties and look of natural skin.
XPL was
developed 5 years back and is made of a
tunable polysiloxane-based material that can be engineered with specific
elasticity, contractility, adhesion, tensile strength and occlusivity.
As our skin
ages, be it chronologically or premature due to sun exposure results in loss of
suppleness and tone due to baseline laxity.
Antiaging
skin products dominate the cosmetic industry and according to market research skin
care market will be worth USD $131 billion Globally by 2019. Antiaging products
not only targets wrinkles but issues such as skin firmness, dry skin, uneven
skin tone, hyper-pigmentation and under eyes bags. It is estimated that 68% of
population use skin care products daily and another 20% use it at least weekly.
The
designing and adoption of the second skin comes with many challenges like it
must be safe, non-irritating, non-allergic, it must adhere to skin at the same
time allowing it to breathe, must have the mechanical strength and it should
simulate the appearance of normal, youthful skin.
In the
study, XPL was deposited on the skin using a two-step optical delivering
system. In the First step a flowable, skin-conformal, reactive polysiloxane
component is applied that is then crosslinked in situ on exposure to the
platinum catalyst as a second step. The second step also allows for optical modulation
by depositing light scattering particles in the second step.
The study
describes 4 in vivo human studies examining the efficacy of XPL as natural
looking youthful skin. The studies comprises of application of XPL on under-eye
area and volar forearm to test the mechanical and barrier function, on the dry
leg skin to test its properties of barrier to water loss and finally a double-blind,
randomized, placebo-controlled study. The RCT tested all the criteria of XPL so
as to function as a second skin.
The results
showed that XPL reliably reshapes the skin due to its mechanical strength and
contractibility. A marked decrease in under-eye bags and wrinkles were
observed, which was mainly due to the cross linking because of the second
application.
It also
imparted a smooth and defined contour to the skin, increasing epidermal
hydration, performing far better over the course of 24 hours than the leading
petrolatum, a commercial moisturizer and a conventional highly occlusive agent.
Apart from
its use in cosmetic industry, it also has important medical applications in
eczema, concealers of vascular anomalies such as port-wine stains and UV
protector after incorporating SPF.
The downside
is it cannot be applied with makeup, currently expensive, and needs reapplication
after every 24 hours.
All the
authors of the paper have an equity in Olivo Laboratories and Living proof.
References:
http://www.foxnews.com/health/2016/05/10/scientists-engineer-second-skin-that-corrects-wrinkles.html
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