Australian-developed skin gel could prevent ageing and DNA damage

Australian scientists have developed a radical new skin gel showing promise to halve healing time, stop chronic pain and potentially avoid skin cancer.

A radical new skin gel showing promise to halve healing time, stop chronic pain and potentially help avoid skin cancer has been developed by Australian scientists.

Because the copper-based compound is able to suppress the body’s injury process at its earliest stages, its inventors believe the gel could event prevent DNA damage and skin ageing.

Although the exact way the experimental compound RM191A works is still being investigated, it is known to prevent the build-up of free radicals which otherwise trigger the body to induce inflammation, pain, bruising and other types of injury.

Professor Palli Thordarson from ARC Centre of Excellence in Convergent Bio-Nano Science said tests on human skin in the laboratory showed a gel made of RM191A reduced healing time from 23 days to 10-12 days.

While human trials are still in their infancy, Prof Thordarson said laboratory and animal testing also showed the containing highly active copper compound significantly DNA damage caused by the sun and cut inflammation by 75 per cent by blocking free radicals signals.

“We still haven’t fully managed to understand exactly what is going on,” Prof Thordarson said.

“We do know it has some unusual electrochemical properties and that is why it seems to quench these radicals.

“It is like how you use an extinguisher to put out a fire. This copper complex is like an extinguisher, it puts out the radical fire.

“You can put the cream on the fire and it slows down the radical production, which slows down all the damage and some of the pain associated with that.”

Professor Palli Thordarson aid tests on human skin in the laboratory showed a gel made of RM191A reduced healing time from 23 days to 10-12 days

Developed by Sydney-based biotech company, RR MedSciences, work to transform RM191 into a topical gel to protects the skin is a collaboration with the ARC Centre of Excellence, the Universities of NSW and Sydney and Macquarie University, with initial results published recently in the journal Redox Biology.

Phase 2 trials human trials have also begun at Sydney’s Royal North Shore Hospital to determine if the Australian invention can be effective in treating chronic neuropathic pain, with an initial examination of 24 patients to be completed by the end of January.

The gel is also being examined as a potential burn cream, however RR MedSciences co-founder and chief scientist Llewellyn Casbolt said it was essentially a new class of anti-inflammatory drug.

He said the copper compounds in RM191A worked in the same way as naturally occurring enzymes called superoxide dismutases, or SODs, which control free radicals in the human body.

However, Mr Casbolt said tests on human skin freshly removed from patients showed it was between 10-30 times more active the body’s naturally produced SOD.

“By acting at the very earliest stage of inflammation... then you change the progression of inflammation and therefore the progression of the trauma,” he said.

“What RM191A is actually neutralises the free radicals, which begin the whole process of inflammation.

“Within a very short period of time you will have no pain, the inflammation won’t appear, the bruising won’t appear, the swelling won’t appear in 24 hours later it’s like you didn’t have a trauma.

“It is just extraordinary.”