People spend a bundle on hiding or removing old scars, from heavy makeup to laser skin-resurfacing treatments that cost thousands of dollars. They can use topical creams, too, but many products available over the counter don't do anything to lessen bumpy scars like keloids.
Intriguingly, though, a team of Australian scientists has found early evidence that a new skin cream could possibly heal those raised scars.
In a new paper published in the journal Science Translational Medicine and flagged by Gizmodo, researchers at the University of Western Australia and Fiona Stanley Hospital examined the effectiveness of an experimental ointment called PXS-6302 — also known as SNT-6302 — which is being developed by Australian biomedicine company Syntara. (The research team's work, for what it's worth, was funded by Syntara.)
This topical cream is meant to ameliorate the appearance of keloid scars by inhibiting lysyl oxidase, an enzyme important for tissue repair that causes collagen to "cross-link," giving rise to raised scars.
For the study, a phase 1 clinical trial, the team took 50 people with older scars and divided them into several groups receiving either the new cream or a placebo, which they each applied for several months.
After the trial was over, scientists observed interesting changes happening at the molecular level of participants' skin.
"Treatment with PXS-6302 three times per week reduced lysyl oxidase activity by 66 percent and decreased hydroxyproline (a marker for collagen) and total protein concentrations in scar biopsies compared with placebo," reads the paper.
In other words, the stuff seems to work, and it seemed that the cream was altering the skin's structure to become "unscarred skin architecture" — so, if future research goes well, it just might be a promising new treatment for people with scars they want to remove for aesthetic reasons, or even ones that hamper movement.
More on scars: A New Discovery About Human Skin Could Help Us Eliminate Scarring
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