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 The goal of the research is to prevent skin cancers by darkening the
pigmentation of people's skin, senior author Dr. David Fisher told
Reuters Health.
"Very light skin and a very poor ability to tan correlates with a
very high probability of developing cancer," said Fisher, who is
chief of the dermatology service at Massachusetts General Hospital
in Boston.
Darker skin may block harmful UV radiation, Fisher said. So it's
possible that darkening the skin's pigmentation might help
neutralize the risk associated with genes for light-colored hair and
fair skin.
A decade ago, Fisher's team found a way to change the pigmentation
of skin cells in mice from very fair to dark, which protected their
cells from the type of UV damage that can lead to skin cancer.
Unfortunately, the topical agent that worked to darken the skin of
mice didn't work as effectively on thicker human skin.
Since then, the researchers have been trying to find alternative
ways to achieve the same goal in humans, Fisher said.
Eventually, they identified enzymes - called small-molecule
salt-inducible kinases - that help control pigmentation in a cell.
When the researchers applied the enzymes onto mice and samples of
human skin in a lab, both the mice and the human skin turned
increasingly dark as more enzymes were applied, according to the
study published in Cell Reports.
Fisher said the darkened skin responded like a normal tan, but
without the damage seen with UV radiation.
The darker pigment - the melanin - "won’t go away until the cells
mature, die and fall of the surface," he said.
The enzyme solution used in the study is far from being available at
local pharmacies, however.
"As in anything that’s a new strategy, this needs toxicity testing
to know it’s safe before going into man and all sorts of clinical
trials," said Fisher.
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A drug that darkens pigmentation may have uses beyond the
theoretical protection against skin cancer, including to
cosmetically darken skin among people with other medical conditions,
said Dr. Jonathan Zippin, of Weill Cornell Medicine's Department of
Dermatology in New York.
"There is a clear cosmetic application," he told Reuters Health. "If
you want to prove that you’ve improved skin cancer risk, you've got
to do that study and that’s going to require time," he noted.
"There is a limited number of drugs available that can effectively
elevate pigmentation in a safe way," said Zippin, who was not
involved with the new research. "So this is exciting in the sense
that it could be one such drug to fill that niche."
Fisher is focused on developing a product that will protect against
skin cancers.
"There is such a prevention opportunity that is missed right now,"
he said.
SOURCE: http://bit.ly/2swRnn6 Cell Reports, online June 13, 2017.
(Story refiles to update link in Source line at the bottom.)
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