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1 hour ago, Sirius Lee said:Well, not really. If you consider that scar sufferers spend, on average, $10,000 for various useless treatments that deliver mediocre result, this might be a real bargain. At least, you have a real shot here (if proven to be as effective as touted).
It is a tad expensive but luckily money is not an issue for me.
Honestly if there™s a barn owner here, I™ll sponsor a dosage of this drug if you can inject it into your pig..
8 hours ago, nikkigirl said:Maybe you all can go through life wearing a mask due to covid or pretend to be a masked singer and go around town masked.Problem solved!
I can understand that u might have lost your hope on future treatments and think that what we are discussing here are awaste of time.But this topic is exactly to debate about scarless healing you believing it or not, it being a reality or not.Whats the point to make this kind of post? What does this add to the topic? I dont expect a reasonable answer, nor i will feed any possible troll purpose arguing witha potential answer.Iwill just ask to respect the theme of the topic.And if you dont have literally nothing to add, and specially if you just have things to subtract, dont leave it here, please. This topic has lost enoughcredibility due to posts like this.
This New York Times article about the Stanford researchis interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/health/surgery-scar.html
Especially the statements at the end where he talks aboutthe fate ofexisting scars.
Alsoanotherdoctorsdoubt that other doctors will even wait for FDA approval to use it.
I dont think weve ever had anything so within reach.. provided that it works of course.
Dr. Longaker remembers the moment. Holy guacamole, he said. The healed wounds looked just like normal skin. They were the same under the microscope. They grew hair. They had oil glands.
His imagination soared. He might be able to prevent scars with a few quick injections of verteporfin. And there was no reason to think he couldnt go even farther. A patient who had a disabling and disfiguring scar could go to a surgeon who could dab the scar with lidocaine to numb the skin, cut open the scar, inject verteporfin around the edges, and close the wound. Would it reheal without the scar?
That could change their lives, Dr. Longaker said.
Dr. Spector said he doubted all doctors would wait until F.D.A. approval if early clinical data supported the laboratory studies. Some are sure to jump ahead and try it because there is nothing now to stop scarring.
Dr. Longaker hopes doctors hold off. Clinical trials must come first, he stressed, and safety must be assured.
I get it, he said. No one is more excited than me.
To be honest, he added, Ive been waiting for 34 years. I would love to use it. This is a big deal. But that doesnt mean we shortcut the process.
6 hours ago, De Rerum Natura said:I can understand that u might have lost your hope on future treatments and think that what we are discussing here are awaste of time.But this topic is exactly to debate about scarless healing you believing it or not, it being a reality or not.Whats the point to make this kind of post? What does this add to the topic? I dont expect a reasonable answer, nor i will feed any possible troll purpose arguing witha potential answer.Iwill just ask to respect the theme of the topic.And if you dont have literally nothing to add, and specially if you just have things to subtract, dont leave it here, please. This topic has lost enoughcredibility due to posts like this.
You know and i know...nothing new has been done in years for scarless healing.I have not seen anything in the news for years to help acne scars. Somebody will gladly take your money....i know...they stole 35k from me. Keep dreaming.......i speak the truth and have been here for years. You want to hold on to the dream that you can do something about scars but after you keep chasing that dream...and it never happens....your life will be over.
On 5/8/2021 at 3:16 PM, Scars4Life said:This New York Times article about the Stanford researchis interesting.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/health/surgery-scar.html
Especially the statements at the end where he talks aboutthe fate ofexisting scars.
Alsoanotherdoctorsdoubt that other doctors will even wait for FDA approval to use it.I dont think weve ever had anything so within reach.. provided that it works of course.
Dr. Longaker remembers the moment. Holy guacamole, he said. The healed wounds looked just like normal skin. They were the same under the microscope. They grew hair. They had oil glands.
His imagination soared. He might be able to prevent scars with a few quick injections of verteporfin. And there was no reason to think he couldnt go even farther. A patient who had a disabling and disfiguring scar could go to a surgeon who could dab the scar with lidocaine to numb the skin, cut open the scar, inject verteporfin around the edges, and close the wound. Would it reheal without the scar?
That could change their lives, Dr. Longaker said.
Dr. Spector said he doubted all doctors would wait until F.D.A. approval if early clinical data supported the laboratory studies. Some are sure to jump ahead and try it because there is nothing now to stop scarring.
Dr. Longaker hopes doctors hold off. Clinical trials must come first, he stressed, and safety must be assured.
I get it, he said. No one is more excited than me.
To be honest, he added, Ive been waiting for 34 years. I would love to use it. This is a big deal. But that doesnt mean we shortcut the process.
Its Impressive and if anyone would truly grasp how big this news is then its gonna be Dr. Longaker seeing he has dedicated nearly 4 decades to scarring.
I read another article with comments from an outside Dr who said he had goosebumps reading over the findings.
Whether it works on us like it does for mice we just need to wait and see. It feels like its on a knifes edge tbh but its a huge win for us that the drug already exists and we can skip all the FDA crap.
This forum has become so skeptical and depressing over the years some people just wont even accept this news, they need to see the before and after of a real person that clinches the deal probably. I can understand that given so many let downs.
On 5/8/2021 at 9:09 PM, nikkigirl said:You know and i know...nothing new has been done in years for scarless healing.I have not seen anything in the news for years to help acne scars. Somebody will gladly take your money....i know...they stole 35k from me. Keep dreaming.......i speak the truth and have been here for years. You want to hold on to the dream that you can do something about scars but after you keep chasing that dream...and it never happens....your life will be over.
So whatdo you make of this recent news?..you were optimistic 6 months ago if I remember right.
20 hours ago, IanChoi said:
3D skin printing can definately be a thing and i think it will be a revolutionary thing,but the time is against us on that.. This is probably a thing for our sons or grandsons(my perspective)..
On 5/9/2021 at 11:33 AM, Sniffy said:Its Impressive and if anyone would truly grasp how big this news is then its gonna be Dr. Longaker seeing he has dedicated nearly 4 decades to scarring.
I read another article with comments from an outside Dr who said he had goosebumps reading over the findings.
Whether it works on us like it does for mice we just need to wait and see. It feels like its on a knifes edge tbh but its a huge win for us that the drug already exists and we can skip all the FDA crap.
This forum has become so skeptical and depressing over the years some people just wont even accept this news, they need to see the before and after of a real person that clinches the deal probably. I can understand that given so many let downs.
So whatdo you make of this recent news?..you were optimistic 6 months ago if I remember right.
Nope....i have been following this thread for 13 years and it is just one thing after another that doesn't pan out.
6 hours ago, nikkigirl said:Nope....i have been following this thread for 13 years and it is just one thing after another that doesn't pan out.
Ive been following it for about as long as well.Ive never gotten excited about anything presented here.
But past events dont dictate future ones.
Trump in all his wisdom decided to defundthe agency responsible for tracking potential pandemics back in 2018. His reasoning.. nothing ever happens.
That is the wrong approach to things regardless of whether youre continuously right. Each treatment presented should be examined as a stand alone solution, and then based on findings criticized/praised.
Some thing shouldnt be dismissedbecause its predecessors have failed.
25 minutes ago, Scars4Life said:Ive been following it for about as long as well.Ive never gotten excited about anything presented here.
But past events dont dictate future ones.
Trump in all his wisdom decided to defundthe agency responsible for tracking potential pandemics back in 2018. His reasoning.. nothing ever happens.
That is the wrong approach to things regardless of whether youre continuously right. Each treatment presented should be examined as a stand alone solution, and then based on findings criticized/praised.
Some thing shouldnt be dismissedbecause its predecessors have failed.
I wonder if this antiscar drug or elastagen will be avalaible in near future and if they can be used to treat acne scars , also what happened to microcoring ?
1 hour ago, Miro said:I wonder if this antiscar drug or elastagen will be avalaible in near future and if they can be used to treat acne scars , also what happened to microcoring ?
Elastagen I would say is a fewyears away. Being a novel product, it really would take a while. But Ive criticized itbefore and still havent seen a single before and after.
The verteporfin drug is basically right there for the taking, I would argue it will comebefore elastagen.But it is kinda spot treatment, excising afew scars here and there. If your face is totally bustedyou would have to treat your yourself for a while.
But if promise is shown in early trials, I feel like some doc in Beverly Hills will be using it.
Waiting to see the results of the pig trials, these researchersseem to be the only ones who see the value in posting a picture of the before and after instead of presentinggraphs and pictures from amicroscope.
2 hours ago, Scars4Life said:Elastagen I would say is a fewyears away. Being a novel product, it really would take a while. But Ive criticized itbefore and still havent seen a single before and after.
The verteporfin drug is basically right there for the taking, I would argue it will comebefore elastagen.But it is kinda spot treatment, excising afew scars here and there. If your face is totally bustedyou would have to treat your yourself for a while.
But if promise is shown in early trials, I feel like some doc in Beverly Hills will be using it.
Waiting to see the results of the pig trials, these researchersseem to be the only ones who see the value in posting a picture of the before and after instead of presentinggraphs and pictures from amicroscope.
Well this elastagen , as u wrote no before afters , as for this drug it is vertoprofin or whatever it is called its medicine that is longon market they use it in eyes or something and one dr claims it helps to heal , so drs can use it now if they want but it looks weird to me
I've summarized the information I could find about the Verteporfin research:
- The research paper [1] describes the mechanisms of scar formation in skin and a simple procedure to achieve full skin regeneration using a very safe FDA approved drug, Verteporfin. Full skin regeneration here refers to skin indistinguishable from normal skin with all the dermal appendages, including hair follicles. According to the paper, Verteporfin works by preventing a type of skin cell (ENF) from giving rise to another type of skin cell (EPF) that causes scarring during wound healing. The way it does this is by blocking mechanotransduction signaling, i.e. the ability of cells to sense mechanical forces.
- The studies were conducted on mice, but according to this article from The New York Times [2], it also works on pigs. Quoting from the article:
"The study involved mice, but the researchers, Dr. Michael Longaker, Stanfords vice chair of surgery, and Geoffrey Gurtner, Stanfords vice president of surgery for innovation, have now moved on to pigs, whose skin is closest to that of humans. With these new subjects, the surgeons made an incision as wide as a thumb and five inches long. When they sutured the cut and injected Verteporfin around the edge, there was dramatically less scarring." - The procedure on mice was, first, create a wound using a skin biopsy punch around 4mm in diameter. After wounding, inject 30 L of Verteporfin (1 mg/mL) [3] around the edges of the wound. Relevant here is that repeated injections on day 4, 8 and 12 didn't improve outcomes and had detrimental effects. A single injection after wounding worked best. The results were, control wounds: hairless scars; treated wounds: substantial hair growth by 30 days and indistinguishable from normal skin by 90 days.
- The drug used on patients is Visudyne. It is a 20 year old drug approved for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration and pathologic myopia. Each box contains a glass vial with 15 mg of Verteporfin powder and costs around 1000 USD. It is reconstituted by injecting 7mL of sterile water into the glass vial to provide 7.5mL of 2 mg/mL Verteporfin. The volume of reconstituted Verteporfin required to achieve 6 mg/m2 body surface area, around 5mL for an adult by Mosteller formula, is withdrawn from the vial and diluted with 5% Dextrose for Injection to a total infusion volume of 30 mL. It is administered intravenously over 10 minutes at a rate of 3 mL/minute. The second step is the light activation of Visudyne using a laser at 15 minutes after the start of the infusion, but this part is irrelevant for wound healing. Note that the dosage used on mice was minuscule in comparison at 30L of 1 mg/mL Verteporfin, or 0.03mg of Verteporfin, and that it was injected in the skin instead.
- Patents on Verteporfin have all expired so anyone can manufacture it. There are manufacturers selling >99% purity Verteporfin at better prices for research purposes, but they don't sell to patients.
- There is previous work [4] on the role that tension plays during wound healing on humans:
"embrace Active Scar Defense is the only FDA-Cleared scar therapy system designed to relieve tension around incisions, general cuts and lacerations to prevent the formation of new, visible, raised scars before they start."
Presumably, completely blocking mechanotransduction at the cellular level using a drug like Verteporfin would work much better.
It would be very valuable to receive input from dermatologists. Would any dermatologist be willing to use this drug off-label during scar revision surgery?
[1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6540/eaba2374
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/health/surgery-scar.html
[3] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2021/04/21/372.6540.eaba2374.DC1/aba2374_Mascharak_SM.pdf
[4] https://www.embracescartherapy.com/citations-and-patents
@toagi I LOVE YOU Friend! Awesome summary!
QuoteAfterwounding, inject 30 L of Verteporfin (1 mg/mL)[3]around the edges of the wound. Relevant here is that repeated injections on day 4, 8 and 12 didn't improve outcomes and had detrimental effects.
Thats very promising, and it makes me wonder what kind of effects are. The hype is real.
14 hours ago, toagi said:I've summarized the information I could find about the Verteporfin research:
- The research paper [1] describes the mechanisms of scar formation in skin and a simple procedure to achieve full skin regeneration using a very safe FDA approved drug, Verteporfin. Full skin regeneration here refers to skin indistinguishable from normal skin with all the dermal appendages, including hair follicles. According to the paper, Verteporfin works by preventing a type of skin cell (ENF) from giving rise to another type of skin cell (EPF) that causes scarring during wound healing. The way it does this is by blocking mechanotransduction signaling, i.e. the ability of cells to sense mechanical forces.
- The studies were conducted on mice, but according to this article from The New York Times [2], it also works on pigs. Quoting from the article:
"The study involved mice, but the researchers, Dr. Michael Longaker, Stanfords vice chair of surgery, and Geoffrey Gurtner, Stanfords vice president of surgery for innovation, have now moved on to pigs, whose skin is closest to that of humans. With these new subjects, the surgeons made an incision as wide as a thumb and five inches long. When they sutured the cut and injected Verteporfin around the edge, there was dramatically less scarring."- The procedure on mice was, first, create a wound using a skin biopsy punch around 4mm in diameter. After wounding, inject 30 L of Verteporfin (1 mg/mL) [3] around the edges of the wound. Relevant here is that repeated injections on day 4, 8 and 12 didn't improve outcomes and had detrimental effects. A single injection after wounding worked best. The results were, control wounds: hairless scars; treated wounds: substantial hair growth by 30 days and indistinguishable from normal skin by 90 days.
- The drug used on patients is Visudyne. It is a 20 year old drug approved for the treatment of age-related macular degeneration and pathologic myopia. Each box contains a glass vial with 15 mg of Verteporfin powder and costs around 1000 USD. It is reconstituted by injecting 7mL of sterile water into the glass vial to provide 7.5mL of 2 mg/mL Verteporfin. The volume of reconstituted Verteporfin required to achieve 6 mg/m2 body surface area, around 5mL for an adult by Mosteller formula, is withdrawn from the vial and diluted with 5% Dextrose for Injection to a total infusion volume of 30 mL. It is administered intravenously over 10 minutes at a rate of 3 mL/minute. The second step is the light activation of Visudyne using a laser at 15 minutes after the start of the infusion, but this part is irrelevant for wound healing. Note that the dosage used on mice was minuscule in comparison at 30L of 1 mg/mL Verteporfin, or 0.03mg of Verteporfin, and that it was injected in the skin instead.
- Patents on Verteporfin have all expired so anyone can manufacture it. There are manufacturers selling >99% purity Verteporfin at better prices for research purposes, but they don't sell to patients.
- There is previous work [4] on the role that tension plays during wound healing on humans:
"embrace Active Scar Defense is the only FDA-Cleared scar therapy system designed to relieve tension around incisions, general cuts and lacerations to prevent the formation of new, visible, raised scars before they start."
Presumably, completely blocking mechanotransduction at the cellular level using a drug like Verteporfin would work much better.It would be very valuable to receive input from dermatologists. Would any dermatologist be willing to use this drug off-label during scar revision surgery?
[1] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/372/6540/eaba2374
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/health/surgery-scar.html
[3] https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/suppl/2021/04/21/372.6540.eaba2374.DC1/aba2374_Mascharak_SM.pdf
[4] https://www.embracescartherapy.com/citations-and-patents
Thank you very much for doing this.
One thing to add, if the test really worked on pigs.. We are very near to the showtime. Thats unbelievable to me.
58 minutes ago, De Rerum Natura said:Thank you very much for doing this.
One thing to add, if the test really worked on pigs.. We are very near to the showtime. Thats unbelievable to me.
From what I remember the tests on pigs were something along the lines of.. significantly less scarring.
A far cry from the words that initially blew me away, and Im paraphrasing,looked exactly like normal skin under a microscope, and even an AI program couldnt detect the difference.
Now, my single concern is that the skin of Mice are already farless tighter than ours, so they by default would have less scarring than human skin, consideringthe hypothesis that mechanical tension is what causes scars.
But, if pigs are benefitting from the treatment to a significant degree, then this could come down to treatment optimizations, dosage control etc. Which if determined could see the treatment reach the same level of indistinguishable difference compared to regular skin.
The research on pigs have yet to be published, so they may be working on determining the appropriate approach.
The worst case scenario for us is that pigs and humans haveadditional components in the skin that dont exist in mice,which interferewith the healing process,that would also need to be inhibited or enhanced.
All you can do now is wait, and pray god didnt make mice that much different from us.
1 hour ago, Scars4Life said:From what I remember the tests on pigs were something along the lines of.. significantly less scarring.
A far cry from the words that initially blew me away, and Im paraphrasing,looked exactly like normal skin under a microscope, and even an AI program couldnt detect the difference.
Now, my single concern is that the skin of Mice are already farless tighter than ours, so they by default would have less scarring than human skin, consideringthe hypothesis that mechanical tension is what causes scars.
But, if pigs are benefitting from the treatment to a significant degree, then this could come down to treatment optimizations, dosage control etc. Which if determined could see the treatment reach the same level of indistinguishable difference compared to regular skin.
The research on pigs have yet to be published, so they may be working on determining the appropriate approach.
The worst case scenario for us is that pigs and humans haveadditional components in the skin that dont exist in mice,which interferewith the healing process,that would also need to be inhibited or enhanced.
All you can do now is wait, and pray god didnt make mice that much different from us.
I think this drug will definitely changethings in scar treatment, as toagi mentioned above;
"The study involved mice, but the researchers, Dr. Michael Longaker, Stanfords vice chair of surgery, and Geoffrey Gurtner, Stanfords vice president of surgery for innovation, have now moved on to pigs, whose skin is closest to that of humans. With these new subjects, the surgeons made an incision as wide as a thumb and five inches long. When they sutured the cut and injected Verteporfin around the edge, there was dramatically less scarring."
What dramatically less scarring means?
How that can be comparable with results that can be achieved nowdays?
For many of us, having a skin that looks "normal"from outside/ give the aesthetic appearence of a normal skinis already a resolution to the problem.Even if its structure is different from a scarless skin and doesnt have all the follicles or characteristicsof a normal and untouched skin...
How adaptations, dosages and methods will yield the best results still something fascinating that is yet to come.. We shouldnt let this verteporfin hype die by any means til we know of this drug really works
5 inches long and about 2cm wide is a fairly sizeable wound to begin with for the Pig so 'dramatically less scarring' should be seen as a positive even if it was stitched up. They know it works its just a case of how do they optimize it now. Interesting that the more dosage they applied the effects were detrimental unfortunately. So maybe its not a one and done treatment but rather completely remove scarring over 2-3 sessions.
Microcoring using larger cores around 1mm could be perfect followed by verteporfin for scattered smaller scars like acne scars.
It feels like we are close...
1 hour ago, De Rerum Natura said:I think this drug will definitely changethings in scar treatment, as toagi mentioned above;
"The study involved mice, but the researchers, Dr. Michael Longaker, Stanfords vice chair of surgery, and Geoffrey Gurtner, Stanfords vice president of surgery for innovation, have now moved on to pigs, whose skin is closest to that of humans. With these new subjects, the surgeons made an incision as wide as a thumb and five inches long. When they sutured the cut and injected Verteporfin around the edge, there was dramatically less scarring."What dramatically less scarring means?
How that can be comparable with results that can be achieved nowdays?For many of us, having a skin that looks "normal"from outside/ give the aesthetic appearence of a normal skinis already a resolution to the problem.Even if its structure is different from a scarless skin and doesnt have all the follicles or characteristicsof a normal and untouched skin...
How adaptations, dosages and methods will yield the best results still something fascinating that is yet to come.. We shouldnt let this verteporfin hype die by any means til we know of this drug really works
Definitelydont kill the hype.
But I feel like Ive contributed enough to hyping it up in these forum, so I also need to bring it back to earth a bit.
If everything goes well, this discoverystands to disrupt the entire scar revision market.
As Ive said previously, there hasnt been a single item in my time of studying and observing the different scartreatments,that even remotely rival what this drug is proposing to deliver.
Dr. Longaker is pretty reputable in his field, hes not some random clown that crawled into existence overnight. And the institution associated with this research is Stanford University, not some random party school looking for research funds. These are heavyweight entities, that have reputations, and are putting it on the line by delivering these outrageous news, with before and afters mind you.If this doesnt excite you, then I dont know what will.
But.. lastly, we need to remember to stay grounded and question everything, especially to prevent someone from doing something rash like injecting themselves with this drug before any trials. Still though, this really is the closest Ive ever felt to a real solution arriving.
I dont want to be like nikkigirl, but you guys should not get too excited. Positive comes from those papers, negative comes from todays reality.There is no human trials yet and we are thinking how to combine it with microcoring. Cmon.
1 hour ago, Candy Says said:I dont want to be like nikkigirl, but you guys should not get too excited. Positive comes from those papers, negative comes from todays reality.There is no human trials yet and we are thinking how to combine it with microcoring. Cmon.
Micro-coring is a device that is yet to come and hold its promises, but the difference here is that this drug is approved already.. Is not something that 100% rely on any test, if this drug really works, eventually doctors will start to use it off-label even if trials take long.
On 5/13/2021 at 9:42 AM, Scars4Life said:Elastagen I would say is a fewyears away. Being a novel product, it really would take a while. But Ive criticized itbefore and still havent seen a single before and after.
The verteporfin drug is basically right there for the taking, I would argue it will comebefore elastagen.But it is kinda spot treatment, excising afew scars here and there. If your face is totally bustedyou would have to treat your yourself for a while.
But if promise is shown in early trials, I feel like some doc in Beverly Hills will be using it.
Waiting to see the results of the pig trials, these researchersseem to be the only ones who see the value in posting a picture of the before and after instead of presentinggraphs and pictures from amicroscope.
I wonder if this drugVerteporfin can be used on the eyelids , i have terrible skin texture on my eyelids due to dermatitis
On 5/11/2021 at 8:58 AM, De Rerum Natura said:3D skin printing can definately be a thing and i think it will be a revolutionary thing,but the time is against us on that.. This is probably a thing for our sons or grandsons(my perspective)..
I doubt it , technology is advancing all the time , i think we'll be able to shallow a pill and achieve scarfree healing if we live long enough into the future haha.