Spicules!

Spicules are microscopic, needle-like structures found primarily in marine and freshwater sponges, composed of silica or calcium carbonate. They have been called "liquid micro-needling" and a useful development in skin care technology. Spicules are (usually) taken from marine sponges and (usually) made from Calcium Carbonate or Silica. The consequential micro-channeling promotes physical exfoliation, encourages cell turnover, and allows active ingredients (like retinol or peptides) to penetrate much deeper and work more efficiently

Wrinkles are one of the most common morphological features of skin aging. Interest in anti-aging is growing every day as people pay more attention to beauty and their looks. For these reasons, the interest in functional antiaging cosmetics has increased for most age groups and many cosmetic products targeted at reducing signs of aging have been developed. Despite various approaches in developing cosmetics, these products have limited skin penetration due to the skin barrier.

Therefore, various molecular, chemical, and morphological studies have been performed on increasing the skin penetration of various topical agents.

Micro-needle technology offers an efficient and minimally invasive drug delivery compared to conventional trans-dermal patches and intradermal injections. With the advancement of micro-units manufacturing technology, micro-needles have been developed by academic laboratories and pharmaceutical companies, and are currently being used to enhance transdermal delivery of various molecules. Micro-needles increase the patients’ compliance as they may have a regular needle phobia so that patients can apply the drug by themselves. Micro-needles in form of patches are band-aid like materials with embedded microneedles fabricated in arrays and can be in four versions such as hollow, solid, coated and polymer forms.

However, there are some limitations for using these patches. First, skin pore closure needs to be additionally investigated after micro-needle patches application as it relates to the risk of infections. Second, it is difficult to control the drug amount in micro-needle patches. To overcome these challenges, a new drug delivery technique with higher efficacy and safety is required.

This was the first study to investigate a soluble microspicule type topical agent for anti-wrinkle improvement. In experiments using pig skin, microspicule cream showed higher skin penetration ability than a typical cream, containing the same ingredients. This method allows delivery of various agents, but with a topical application. As such, it was possible to evaluate the anti-wrinkle efficacy and safety of soluble MS-EGF, delivering EGF beyond the external skin barrier.

In a randomised and controlled face spilt trial of 20 healthy volunteers who had MS-EGF and EGF in a cream form, periocular wrinkles were clinically improved in both groups after 8 weeks. However, there were significant differences in dermal density, dermal depth, and wrinkle se-verity after 4 and 8 weeks between the two treatment forms.

Anti-wrinkle improvement with MS-EGF was more significant and superior to the EGF alone treatment. In the study, the skin penetration ability for EGF was also larger with MS-EGF. This implied the increased anti-wrinkle effi-cacy of MS-EGF was due to superior skin penetration abil-ity from the micro-spicules. Most participants were more satisfied when using MS-EGF and consider that micro-spicules might find more applications and be more favored, despite the scrubbing of particles, and regardless of pain during the application. Although there was a temporary erythema and mild pain on MS-EGF lesion when rubbing strongly, it led to a better clinical outcome.

There has been one report on clinical improvements of periocular wrinkle using micro-needle patch including GF. It showed the positive effects for the micro-needle EGF patch on physician-rated wrinkle scores, patient satisfaction levels, and corneometer results. However, there were no statistical differences compared with the control group, hyaluronic acid-based and without EGF microneedle patches. This implied that the anti-wrinkle effects of the micro-needle patch may had been solely be due to the HA rather than EGF in the patches.

To further delineate the advantage of MS-EGF, in the future, additional studies need to compare the efficacy of EGF micro-needle patches with MS-EGF cream technology for wrinkle reduction. In conclusion, the results of this study identified a favourable clinical benefit for MS-EGF in treating periocular wrinkles along with good tolerability and higher satisfaction from the volunteers that used it. Furthermore, the soluble property of micro-spicules is noteworthy for a new type of cosmetics delivery system and has more development potential in various other applications.

(MS-EGF - Micro-Spicule containing Epidermal Growth Factor)

(EGF - Epidermal Growth Factor)

Not my own work. Taken from: (Italics, here, are mine)

Ha, Jeong-Min & Lim, Cho-Ah & Han, Kyuboem & Ha, Jong-Cheon & Lee, Hae-Eul & Lee, Young & Seo, Young-Joon & Kim, Chang-Deok & Lee, Jeung-Hoon & Im, Myung. (2017). The Effect of Micro-Spicule Containing Epidermal Growth Factor on Periocular Wrinkles. Annals of Dermatology. 29. 187-193. 10.5021/ad.2017.29.2.187.

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