Two Recent JDD Articles Highlight Genome and Proteome Protection and Repair Strategies

I thoroughly enjoyed reading the two articles by Drs. Emanuele and Spencer in your March Issue. The first article, “From DNA repair to proteome protection: new molecular insights for preventing non-melanoma skin cancers and skin aging,”¹ gave us a fascinating insight into the relationship between the biomarkers for UV-induced skin damage and skin aging and carcinogenesis. The need to protect our proteome even more than our genome seems revolutionary but certainly logical. Just as importantly, the suggestion that these markers could be used to measure the extent of existing damage as well as monitoring response to treatment is encouraging. Finally, we desperately need to standardize biomarkers in order to validate present and future photo-protection products. Hopefully the days of being inundated by products with big advertising budgets and poor or no data are gone.

The second article, “An Experimental Double-Blind Irradiation Study of a Novel Topical Product (TPF 50) Compared to Other Topical Products With DNA Repair Enzymes, Antioxidants, and Growth Factors With Sunscreens: Implications for Preventing Skin Aging and Cancer,”² demonstrated the distinct advantages of combining a sunscreen with DNA repair enzymes and antioxidants. After witnessing the agonizingly slow consensus process in the sunscreen debate over the past 30 years, I am grateful for this innovative, transparent and commonsensical research. In light of these new findings, it is obvious that recommending traditional sunscreens from now on would be woefully inadequate. Based on the results of this comprehensive, comparative study, we can now confidently provide our patients with intelligent sun protection; one that not only prevents but also repairs the UV-induced damage incurred by both the genome and the proteome. I suspect that TPF50 will be the first of ever better sunscreens to come. Our patients and we are indebted to this group for their enormous effort.

This is truly a game changer.

The author has not disclosed any relevant conflicts.