The sequencing of the human genome some ten years ago opened the door to a new medicine – personalised medicine -, enabling much research to be carried out in recent years aimed at developing products and services that meet the specific genetic and chemical needs of each individual patient. The SKINTREAT project falls within this context, being aimed at developing new, personalised products for treating skin disorders such as psoriasis, cell damage due to UV rays and atopic dermatitis.
The new generation of pharmaceutical products that is to be developed within the SKINTREAT project — led by the Israeli multinational cosmetic company, Ahava, and with the participation of 7 members of the European Union and 2 associated states (Israel and Turkey) — will take into account both the cutaneous illness as well as the idiosyncrasies of each individual patient. For example, their type of skin or their response to the ingestion of pharmaceutical drugs.
The project, initiated in 2008 and the conclusion of which is anticipated for 2012, proposes a whole line of research from basic experimentation to developing new methods of in vivo validation with patients who suffer from the various disorders studied within the project. Techniques such as the genotyping of individuals, the development of drug nano-vehicle carriers and nanotoxicology, come together within the framework of this research in a database the objective of which is to help health personnel and patients when choosing treatment adapted to their needs. Also, and as a “concept test”, this research will analyse the properties of Dead Sea minerals for the three previously mentioned skin disorders.
The project covers all the elements in the chain of the development of the product – from the search for biomarkers for the various skin disorders in question, including the development of new techniques aimed at the toxicological encapsulation and evaluation of these new products, to the proposal for a product development marketing and validation strategy for volunteers suffering from different ailments.
The work of GAIKER-IK4
GAIKER-IK4’s task, as leader of the work packet on in vitro nanotoxicology, boosts the role of the centre at a European level in the development of new in vitro methodologies enabling the rapid and efficient evaluation of toxicity and nanoproducts. These latter, despite their incipient use in applications as wide-ranging as the elimination of contaminants in water, the detection and destruction of cancer cells or the creation of materials for intelligent implants, cannot be toxicologically evaluated in a conventional way, but require interdisciplinary collaboration in order to design a strategy enabling the study of a series of representative nanoparticles and, in this manner, establish the most appropriate set of toxicological tests.