Author Interviews, Dermatology, Environmental Risks / 07.12.2017
Current Sunscreens Lack Protection Against Damaging Effects of Visible Light
MedicalResearch.com Interview with:
Prof. Dr. Mauricio S. Baptista
Chemistry Institute (IQ-USP)
University of São Paulo
Brazil
MedicalResearch.com: What is the background for this study? What are the main findings?
Response: This research started around 7 years ago. Our lab had a lot of previous experience in studying how photosensitizers (molecules that absorb light and transfer energy to others in its surroundings) used for Photodynamic Therapy, behave in the intracellular environments. We realized that most scientific work that defined the effects of sun in skin did not really consider looking into the properties of the molecules that are naturally found in skin and that absorb light. We also realized that very likely natural photosensitizers present in the skin behaves similarly when excited by either UVA or visible light. It all depends on which molecule absorb light and how the subsequent excited states behave. The work started by looking at melanin and melanocyte cells (Chiarelli-Neto et al Free Radic Biol Med 2011, 51, 1195; Chiarelli-Neto O et al. PLoS ONE, 2014 9(11): e113266). More recently we start looking at keratinocytes and liposfucin (Tonolli et al Journal of Investigative Dermatology 2017, 137, 2447).
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