CONSTANT worrying about the sun and its power to burn, wrinkle and mottle the skin -- or worse, cause cancer -- comes with the summer territory. But what if there were an extra level of protection, say a pill or a lotion, that helped prevent the most common effects of too much ultraviolet light?
Researchers are working on it.
"Sunscreens are difficult to use properly," says Daniel Yarosh, president of AGI Dermatics, a Freeport, N.Y., biotech company that is developing a lotion to help the skin mend itself. "Science is trying to find something better."
The beyond-sunscreens research falls into two categories. One approach helps repair cellular skin damage after too much sun exposure. The other approach makes the skin less sensitive to the sun.
"The research in this field is still relatively early," says Dr. Henry W. Lim, chairman of the department of dermatology at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. "But I think this is something that will continue to develop."
Repair from within
The most rigorously tested damage-control product thus far is called Dimericine, developed by AGI Dermatics.
Currently in stage-three clinical trials, the product is based on an understanding of how cells try to repair themselves when damaged.
"The idea that people can have a natural repair mechanism is known," Yarosh says.
"What is new is that there are things we can do to optimize it. We're moving into a stage of understanding how the cell responds to damage -- what genes get turned on in young skin and what genes get turned on in old skin and how can we make old skin act young.
"That's what makes this so exciting."
Dimericine, he says, contains a customized enzyme that can recognize DNA damage caused by ultraviolet light and speed up repair.
"It's like patching a tire," he says. "You can get rid of the damage and the DNA goes back to being normal.
"We call it a morning-after lotion. It can be used after sun exposure but before damage has arrived."
The company is testing the product, which would be available only by prescription, in people with a condition called xeroderma pigmentosum, a rare genetic disease that predisposes individuals to skin cancer. A study of 30 people published in 2001 in the Lancet showed the lotion reduced the incidence of precancerous growths, called actinic keratoses, by 68% and basal cell carcinoma by 30%.
