BY Andrew Seaman | Reuters
Sun worshippers might someday be able to get a tan without exposing their skin to the harmful ultraviolet (UV) radiation that’s responsible for skin cancers, a new study suggests.
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.
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-coloured 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 result 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 similarly to a normal tan, but without the damage seen with UV radiation.
The enzyme solution used in the study is far from being available at local pharmacies, however.
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.
