Phd Student Invents Tattoo Removal Cream
Alex Falkenham, a PhD student of Dalhousie University in Halifax has created a tattoo removal cream that causes permanent tattoos to naturally fade away. The cream is meant to be applied topically on the skin and is painless to use without causing any side effects like redness, inflammation, blistering or scarring.
This is markedly different from other existing tattoo removal procedures like laser surgery, which involves the targeting of pigments in the tattoo. The cream on the other hand works by targeting macrophages - these are cells of the immune system that are known to consume foreign material to provide protection to close-by areas.
When you get tattooed, the ink reaches deep into the dermis layer of the skin where the macrophages identify it as 'foreign'. Two things happen here. A portion of the macrophages will absorb the ink and carry it to the lymph nodes, where both the cell and the ink get destroyed. The rest of the macrophages that have eaten the ink will now go deeper into the skin and stay there giving the tattoo its permanent look. However with passage of time, the macrophages get replaced by new ones and this causes the tattoo to slowly fade.
The Bisphosphonate Liposomal Tattoo Removal (BLTR) aims to stimulate new macrophages to eat up the rest of the ink. According to Falkenham, the cream works "essentially like a Trojan horse; you've got this drug inside, almost like a protective barrier, and the macrophages like to eat up that protective barrier, not knowing that there's a drug inside. It's exploiting the appetite of these cells for any kind of foreign body."
Interestingly, Falkenham came up on his unique idea 3 years ago when he decided to get inked himself for the first time. He along with his other fellow researchers tested the cream on a batch of pigs and mice. They noticed that the tattoos faded after 2 applications and the results were consistent regardless of ink color or the age of the tattoo. Falkenham currently is looking to have his creation patented so that the cream can be sold over the counter without the need for a prescription.
