June 13, 2017

After 10 years of research, scientists have come up with a drug that could help people tan without exposure to the sun, potentially reducing the risk of skin cancer.

The drug stimulates cells that produce the pigment that absorbs ultra-violet light, the researchers said in the US journal Cell Reports published on Tuesday. They stressed that further tests are needed to safeguard against potential side-effects in humans.

Applied as a cream to the skin, the drug allowed red-haired mice to develop a deep tan. Like their pale-skinned human counterparts, the mice are particularly susceptible to the damaging effects of the sun's ultra-violet rays.

The original breakthrough in mice was announced more than a decade ago, in a study published in the British journal Nature in 2006. But it has taken scientists that much time to work out how to make much thicker human skin absorb the substance.

The initial report revealed that a substance called forskolin gave red-haired mice a deep tan without exposure to UV light. But because human skin is relatively hairless compared to animals', it has evolved to be much tougher in order to protect against heat, cold and other environmental factors, and the topical substance could not penetrate it effectively.

"Human skin is a very good barrier and is a formidable penetration challenge. Therefore, other topical approaches just did not work," said David Fisher, chief of dermatology at Massachusetts General Hospital, a professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School, and one of the authors of the study.

"But 10 years later, we have come up with a solution. It's a different class of compounds, that work by targeting a different enzyme that converges on the same pathway that leads to pigmentation," he said.

The scientists tested the substance on samples of human skin kept in laboratories and found that it darkened in proportion to the dosage applied. The tan lasted several days.

In animal tests, red-haired mice became "almost jet black in a day or two with a strong enough dose," the researchers observed. When the dosage was removed, normal skin regeneration meant the color faded within a week or so.

"We believe the potential importance of this work is towards a novel strategy for skin cancer prevention," Fisher said.

"Skin is the most common organ in our bodies to be afflicted with cancer, and the majority of cases are thought to be associated with UV radiation," he said.

The long-term aim would be to create a cream that develops a tan without exposure to sunlight but which also absorbs harmful UV rays like traditional sun screens.

Explore further: Study replicates tanning response in cultured human skin

Journal reference: Cell Reports Nature

2017 AFP

Investigators at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) have developed a way of increasing pigmentation in human skin without the damaging effects of ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Their ...

A new study finds that carvedilol, a drug typically used to treat high blood pressure, can protect against the sun-induced cell damage that leads to skin cancer. Researchers serendipitously discovered the beta blocker's cancer-fighting ...

(HealthDay)Many Latinos think they're safe from sun damage, even though advanced skin cancer is increasingly common in this group, a New York skin specialist warns.

Researchers at the University of Dundee have found that skin cancers in mice can closely mirror those found in humans, offering a model that could be used to help develop new drugs and find new ways of preventing the disease.

In 2006, UC researchers were given $1 million from the National Cancer Institute to develop a topical treatment that would not only make skin tan but would also work to both block harmful ultraviolet rays (UV) and repair ...

A collaboration between Sad M. Sebti, Ph.D., chair of Moffitt Cancer Center's Drug Discovery Department, and Michele Pagano, M.D., chair of the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Pharmacology at New York University's ...

Today some patients suffering with mantle cell lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, can be treated with a pill called Ibrutinib, forgoing conventional chemotherapy. However, many are developing a resistance to this treatment. ...

An international team of researchers bioengineering human liver tissues uncovered previously unknown networks of genetic-molecular crosstalk that control the organ's developmental processes - greatly advancing efforts to ...

Every day our bodies come under a barrage of toxic agents cigarette smoke, the sun, free radicals and other carcinogenic substances that create damaging lesions in our DNA that can initiate cancer and other human ...

The human gene MLL is named for the mixed lineage leukemia it creates. Specifically, the gene may break apart and fuse with parts from one of a number of other genes on other chromosomes to create cancer-causing translocations. ...

A Melbourne study is set to improve treatment options for patients with the second most common type of lung cancer, lung squamous cell carcinoma, a disease for which new anti-cancer drugs are urgently needed.

Please sign in to add a comment. Registration is free, and takes less than a minute. Read more

See the original post here:

Good news for redheads: a tanning drug for the pale-skinned - Medical Xpress