Acne.org Products
Im really impressed with Sunogels new website. Looks a lot more like a proactive company now rather than a blog. I would personally prefer Dr Sun takes his time so it meets the expectations he hopes for, and the customers dont have mistaken expectations like us with Skinte. Pigment doesnt bother me Im more about texture BUT I pray its 100% regeneration in humans.
3 hours ago, golfpanther said:I've been talking to him but the website has the most up to date projections for his trials. He's still actively looking for funding.
Did he say anything else notable? I want to ask him some questions but at the same time I don't want to bother him LOL. He seems like he understands what we go through though as he was a burn victim himself.
1 hour ago, FromScarredtoFree said:Did he say anything else notable? I want to ask him some questions but at the same time I don't want to bother him LOL. He seems like he understands what we go through though as he was a burn victim himself.
We're working together to hopefully make a video promo for Sunogel. Thus far we haven't gotten too into the weeds, but he remains confident that the product will work, even if it needs optimization at some point.
4 hours ago, golfpanther said:We're working together to hopefully make a video promo for Sunogel. Thus far we haven't gotten too into the weeds, but he remains confident that the product will work, even if it needs optimization at some point.
I'm hoping this thing works. I can't wait to get rid of my back acne scarring and my facial pits. SkinTE was a huge let down.
3 minutes ago, MyBeautifulScars said:4 hours ago, golfpanther said:We're working together to hopefully make a video promo for Sunogel. Thus far we haven't gotten too into the weeds, but he remains confident that the product will work, even if it needs optimization at some point.I'm hoping this thing works. I can't wait to get rid of my back acne scarring and my facial pits. SkinTE was a huge let down.
We haven't really seen what Skinte can do on acne scars. The pictures they showed us where extreme burns that are difficult to heal because of variability in depth, scarring, and likely damage of the deeper layers of the skin. Not to mention that there is little to be done to stop the contracture of those burns are very large. In theory excised scar will heal better because it is more uniform and the deeper fat and muscle layers are not damaged. I'm still a bit suspicious about skinte though as they seem evasive.
For what it's worth, these guys recently achieved scarless healing in rats with stem cells and gene therapy. http://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/business/biotech/sd-me-salk-skin-regeneration-belmonte-20180905-story.htm . There are many different researchers attacking this problem from several different angles. I don't understand why people say the technology is quantum leaps away. There aren't any studies on regenerating amputee's limbs for example because that is actually a quantum leap away. In the meantime everyday we are getting closer to a solution and it could be here closer than we think.
4 hours ago, golfpanther said:We're working together to hopefully make a video promo for Sunogel. Thus far we haven't gotten too into the weeds, but he remains confident that the product will work, even if it needs optimization at some point.
Well that would be something useful.
Can he not release the non-optimized product for those who want it badly before he releases the Perfect Regenerative versions? Kinda like Apple that releases an upgraded iphone every year...
21 minutes ago, FromScarredtoFree said:We haven't really seen what Skinte can do on acne scars. The pictures they showed us where extreme burns that are difficult to heal because of variability in depth, scarring, and likely damage of the deeper layers of the skin. Not to mention that there is little to be done to stop the contracture of those burns are very large. In theory excised scar will heal better because it is more uniform and the deeper fat and muscle layers are not damaged. I'm still a bit suspicious about skinte though as they seem evasive.
Honey, no good SkinTE results for acne or knife scars exist. There is a good reason you haven't seen them.
30 minutes ago, surgical scar said:Well that would be something useful.
Can he not release the non-optimized product for those who want it badly before he releases the Perfect Regenerative versions? Kinda like Apple that releases an upgraded iphone every year...
Honey, no good SkinTE results for acne or knife scars exist. There is a good reason you haven't seen them.
They can't test SkinTE on something that isn't approved by the FDA. Right now they are only allowed to test it on burn scars. With that being said I still don't trust them.
7 hours ago, FromScarredtoFree said:They can't test SkinTE on something that isn't approved by the FDA. Right now they are only allowed to test it on burn scars. With that being said I still don't trust them.
That's absolutely not true. They are business motivated and have made contracts with surgeons that can use it on any paying patient they wish. I got a quote for scar revision using SkinTE from a reluctant plastic surgeon to entertain, but wasn't going to do it after I saw the horrid pictures and the doctors explained what a mess it is and that I wouldn't like the result.
4 hours ago, surgical scar said:That's absolutely not true. They are business motivated and have made contracts with surgeons that can use it on any paying patient they wish. I got a quote for scar revision using SkinTE from a reluctant plastic surgeon to entertain, but wasn't going to do it after I saw the horrid pictures and the doctors explained what a mess it is and that I wouldn't like the result.
oh my god that sounds like a disaster! Did the plastic surgeon basically try and tell you not to do it?
2 hours ago, nikki_gargin said:oh my god that sounds like a disaster! Did the plastic surgeon basically try and tell you not to do it?
According to PolarityTE (and I realize trust in them is likely at an all time low for most people on here) they cannot use SkinTE on anything other than wounds that either require a split-thickness skin graft or for revising existing split-thickness skin grafts. The reason being is that they are in a review period with the FDA during their trials to see if they can provide a better result over the clinical standard of care (a split-thickness skin graft).
Take that for what it's worth, but I'm highly skeptical that any doctor would, or even could, agree to apply SkinTE on anything other than injuries that fall into the trial criteria.
2 hours ago, nikki_gargin said:oh my god that sounds like a disaster! Did the plastic surgeon basically try and tell you not to do it?
Yes. The others didn't even respond to requests for quotes for scar revision even though Polarity gave me their numbers to supposedly inquire about it LOL. The rep did say it's in the doctors' discretion to accept it even though she said their company believes it works for scars. Apparently none of the docs really finds it in their discretion to accept a case of non-traumatic injury. They just briefly replied it won't make scars look better if not worse and had no interest to negotiate further.
3 minutes ago, golfpanther said:According to PolarityTE (and I realize trust in them is likely at an all time low for most people on here) they cannot use SkinTE on anything other than wounds that either require a split-thickness skin graft or for revising existing split-thickness skin grafts. The reason being is that they are in a review period with the FDA during their trials to see if they can provide a better result over the clinical standard of care (a split-thickness skin graft).
How come the doctors and the rep didn't say anything about legal restrictions? The rep said the docs can use it for my scar revision if they choose to accept my case. The docs just said they don't recommend it and they don't want to risk making it worse if it's not horrible...nothing about not being allowed to
On 06/09/2018 at 7:36 AM, golfpanther said:We're working together to hopefully make a video promo for Sunogel. Thus far we haven't gotten too into the weeds, but he remains confident that the product will work, even if it needs optimization at some point.
Can you elaborate why he remains confident? He has to be after so many years of developing this product. How can he be so sure the results from Pigs will replicate in human skin? I would like to know why he is so sure WizGel will regenerate perfect skin in humans.
Hope the video helps. For every 10 articles about PolarityTe regenerating skin on the interent you might be lucky to find 1 for Sunogel. I hope its simply a case of Sunogel not trying to make headlines and rather Sunogel just keeping busy and staying focused on delivering a true solution.
On 9/6/2018 at 10:53 AM, surgical scar said:Yes. The others didn't even respond to requests for quotes for scar revision even though Polarity gave me their numbers to supposedly inquire about it LOL. The rep did say it's in the doctors' discretion to accept it even though she said their company believes it works for scars. Apparently none of the docs really finds it in their discretion to accept a case of non-traumatic injury. They just briefly replied it won't make scars look better if not worse and had no interest to negotiate further.
How come the doctors and the rep didn't say anything about legal restrictions? The rep said the docs can use it for my scar revision if they choose to accept my case. The docs just said they don't recommend it and they don't want to risk making it worse if it's not horrible...nothing about not being allowed to
Honestly, I have no idea. The part about being in the trial period for specific indications (i.e. revision of existing skin graft or instead of one) came from one of their recent conference calls I believe that had a transcript posted. I will say (and I have before) that no doctor/surgeon in their right mind would use SkinTE on acne scars at this point in time. Even PolarityTE has long stated that the derivatives they hope to develop would be better suited for the cosmetic market.
From a doctor's perspective, why use an unknown and as of yet unproven product on scarring that isn't even what it's being compared against (i.e. split-thickness skin grafts)? The rep at PolarityTE is likely just playing hands off because they obviously can't recommend it while it's in the trial period but saying it won't help, or even that they just don't know, feeds speculation about their legitimacy.
5 hours ago, Sniffy said:Can you elaborate why he remains confident? He has to be after so many years of developing this product. How can he be so sure the results from Pigs will replicate in human skin? I would like to know why he is so sure WizGel will regenerate perfect skin in humans.Hope the video helps. For every 10 articles about PolarityTe regenerating skin on the interent you might be lucky to find 1 for Sunogel. I hope its simply a case of Sunogel not trying to make headlines and rather Sunogel just keeping busy and staying focused on delivering a true solution.
My guess is that he remains confident because he has the science to back it up. In my conversation with Dr. Sun in December of last year, he did say that he expects a period of optimization for humans, just like they had to do with mice and pigs. But in every conversation I've had with him, Dr. Sun reiterates that he believes he can get to perfect regeneration in humans with his science.
Will that turn out to be the case? Won't know until it's tested obviously.
You can't really compare Sunogel to PolarityTE at this point. Sunogel is a privately held company that is still in the preclinical phase of research. PolarityTE (rightly or wrongly or because they truly are fraudulent) went straight to market as a publicly traded company. Money is to be made with PolarityTE simply because they're on the stock market (the efficacy or safety doesn't even matter for that) so they're going to get a LOT more press.
I think three primary things are at play with respect to why Sunogel isn't more well-known:
1.They're a small privately held preclinical company as a I stated before.
2. Dr. Sun wants to prove efficacy and safety first (which of course is a bit of a catch-22hard to get money taking his long game approach, but hard to do his approach without money).
3. Until recently they're forward-facing stuff (i.e. website) was pretty dismal and didn't do much to inspire confidence. The new website is a huge step in the right direction.
That's why I offered to make the video for him. Video is probably the best marketing tool companies have nowadays to increase visibility and extend their reach. It's easier to digest than wordy and possibly confusing text because you can condense it down to a product's essence so that people can intuitively understand it.
Haven't heard back from him in a bit so I'm going to follow-up and see how he wants to move forward.
55 minutes ago, golfpanther said:I will say (and I have before) that no doctor/surgeon in their right mind would use SkinTE on acne scars at this point in time.
It's not for acne. Of course Polarity won't have the nerve to even hawk this thing to dermatologists. They are plastic surgeons. For revision of hypertrophic white scars. They still think it will make scars look worse. They said they would do it with regular stitching methods but not SkinTE if growing skin is not needed. It would make no sense where an area is not lacking skin.
1 hour ago, golfpanther said:The rep at PolarityTE is likely just playing hands off because they obviously can't recommend it while it's in the trial period but saying it won't help, or even that they just don't know, feeds speculation about their legitimacy.
The rep did recommend it and even had their spokesperson to call me back to confirm that their providers can use it for scar revision if they choose to, and gave me the numbers of the surgeons to hit up. There is no approval period that needs to be waited out. Polarity is just making up excuses in their presentations.
Since there is currently no way of getting rid of a scar completely, I wanted to to make a thread dedicated to future treatments and developments in scar research.
What does the future hold for scar treatment? I've read several recent articles detailing that scientists have been able to regenerate tissue in skin samples by inducing hair follicle growth before fat cells in the wound healing process.
Small cuts heal without any markings because of fat cells called adipocytes that fill in and blend the area with surrounding skin. Scar tissue looks different because it is composed different; it is made of cells called myofibroblasts that lack any fat cells at all.
By inducing hair follicle growth first, we can signal a protein called Bone Morphogenetic Protein which converts myofibroblasts to adipocytes. This is not an improvement in cosmetic treatments, this is full regeneration of skin to a pre-injury state.
I don't want to give any false hope. This research has only been conducted in skin samples from mice and humans (not a live human). With this information, I wanted to know if there has been any other research into skin regeneration or developments. When, if at all, do you think we could see major announcements? Humans are one of the only animals that scar, which I believe evolved as a result of a need to quickly heal. This is not something that is impossible.
There is already a mega thread about this called Scarless healing which has been active for 10 years. There is PolarityTE, Sunogel and some other companies that showed big promises. But really, no conclusive evidence that anyone is anywhereclose to achieving regeneration of skin..
26 minutes ago, eekman said:There is already a mega thread about this called Scarless healing which has been active for 10 years. There is PolarityTE, Sunogel and some other companies that showed big promises. But really, no conclusive evidence that anyone is anywhereclose to achieving regeneration of skin..
I disagree. There have been several different researchers achieving scarless healing in various animal models which suggests we are rather close to achieving it in humans. At the very least we are closer than when the thread just started.
I spoke to Dr. Sun and he was very nice and friendly. He told me he plans to include scarring in the clinical trials. Whether that means he will create a scar in a patient like some clinical trials do or allow people with preexisting scars to join is unknown at this point however. He also talked to me about the burn scars on his arms and how he understands the pain we go through which I didn't expect. I think for someone to go through the effort to cure scarring they have to understand what we go through because it seems like people with cancer or Aids have it worse. Also some unrelated good new that I found is while approval rates for drugs is very low (14%) approval rates for devices is much higher (60-90%) depending on what sort of Device it is classified. Sunogel isn't a life or death device (except maybe in burn victims) nor it is a permanent implant so it's likely it will be a Category II device putting it at a high chance of success if it shows efficacy. We should all endeavor to support Dr Sun as he seems to be the closest this form has ever gotten to an answer. Another interesting thing to note is that Dr. Sun put the whole recipe of his hydrogel in his last paper. To all the super desperate people, you can always make the hydrogel yourself and let us know how it works. XD
Skinte has fallen into even deeper problems it seems as one of their officials was caught doing shady business in other companies. Also Mark Cuban from shark tank admitted he's selling short on it which doesn't help their publicity. But they plan to release clinical results at some sort of a convention soon if anyone is still following them.
54 minutes ago, FromScarredtoFree said:I spoke to Dr. Sun and he was very nice and friendly. He told me he plans to include scarring in the clinical trials. Whether that means he will create a scar in a patient like some clinical trials do or allow people with preexisting scars to join is unknown at this point however. He also talked to me about the burn scars on his arms and how he understands the pain we go through which I didn't expect. I think for someone to go through the effort to cure scarring they have to understand what we go through because it seems like people with cancer or Aids have it worse. Also some unrelated good new that I found is while approval rates for drugs is very low (14%) approval rates for devices is much higher (60-90%) depending on what sort of Device it is classified. Sunogel isn't a life or death device (except maybe in burn victims) nor it is a permanent implant so it's likely it will be a Category II device putting it at a high chance of success if it shows efficacy. We should all endeavor to support Dr Sun as he seems to be the closest this form has ever gotten to an answer. Another interesting thing to note is that Dr. Sun put the whole recipe of his hydrogel in his last paper. To all the super desperate people, you can always make the hydrogel yourself and let us know how it works. XD
Skinte has fallen into even deeper problems it seems as one of their officials was caught doing shady business in other companies. Also Mark Cuban from shark tank admitted he's selling short on it which doesn't help their publicity. But they plan to release clinical results at some sort of a convention soon if anyone is still following them.
SkinTE looked fishy from the start. You had many posters here that were on a hype about them and how they were going to revolutionize the cosmetic industry last year. Many posters disagreed and this led to frequent confrontations. They posted a few pics but the results didn't look good. They claimed full skin regeneration with appendages but those pics didn't do them a favor. They fell out of favor on this forum and the posters who believed in them all but few disappeared.Also, many websites claimed they were a fraud.
They seem to be still going on however and about to publish new results in a few days. Hopefully, then we can finally figure out what they actually are. Investors are slowly pulling out. A year has passed since clinical trials begun so those wounds it was tested on should be healed up and a little red. I do believe their method can truly replace skin grafting one day but they can't do much about scarring. However, they face stiff competition from upcoming 3D skin bio-printing start-ups who are using similar methods.
Sunogel looked promising from the start because Dr. Sun tried to develop something for scars for such a long time. In previous tries, he failed while partnering with other researchers. He went on his own and seems to have developed something to minimize or eliminate scars however we only have a pic of a finger cut to judge. Small cuts heal nicely with barely any visible scarring. Clinical trials should start hopefully next year as planned.
There are a few anti scarringdrugs currently in clinical trials. FS2 is currently in phase 2 clinical trials in North America. The drug which can be injected, taken orally or used as a topical is believed to reduce existing scars and to eliminate new scars from forming. In the UK, OLX101 is in phase 1 clinical trials and phase 2 in South Korea. The makers behind this drug claim to have found a way to inhibit the processes that keep existing scars from going. SCX-001 is in phase 1 in Canada. It is a nefopam based scar cream said to reduce scarring. All these drugs seem to be targeting hypertrophic scarring and not necessarily atrophic acne scars. These drugs can take up to a decade to be marketed.
To me Doctor Sun's photos actually look like scar free healing as opposed to skinte's picture. This photo for example shows full thickness healing with hair. None of Skinte's pictures show that even with the porcine model. In the photos of the pig released by Skinte I felt like I could see a scar but I'm no expert.
Some more good news however is that NIH recently awarded 3.3 Million dollars to UCI to study scarless healing. These are the same professors that collaborated with Costarelis when he made his discovery. https://news.uci.edu/2018/09/10/wound-healing-research-goes-digital-with-3-3-million-nih-grant/
We're getting there slowly but surely 
Also MyBeautifulScars I think the discovery by the Salk institute was a huge deal in scar free healing. If gene therapy improves that could very well be a solution to scars. In 5 years I can see there being a cure possibly but in 10 years I have a hard time imagining they won't have a cure.