Dr Dev Patel
Aesthetic Doctor
Leading Aesthetic Doctor and Founder of CellDerma, Dr Dev Patel, outlines the cutting-edge science of growth factors and their use in skincare.
Specialised cells called stem cells make growth factors naturally as part of our body’s ongoing damage repair and renewal process. Growth factors (GFs) mediate a myriad of pathways to enable regeneration, for example stimulating fibroblast cells in the skin to make new collagen.
Collagen is a much talked about protein, essential for the integrity of the skin. Its levels peak in our early 20s and then deplete 1-2% a year. Women in their first five years of menopause will lose around a third of their current collagen levels.
How growth factors can benefit skin
At my clinic, Perfect Skin Solutions, we use clinical GF preparations to help with wound healing such as scarring, burns, post-surgical healing, stretch marks and more. The speed of healing continues to astound me to this day. If GFs can help accelerate wound healing, imagine what they can do for general ageing. GFs can give a significant kick-start to renewal processes delivering firmer, tighter, brighter and architecturally younger skin – I call it the ‘Terminator effect’.
Finding the best growth factors to use
Epidermal growth factor (EGF) is the best known. However, there are a few other key GFs that give a more holistic effect on skin tissue healing. Our CellDerma GF5 formula (and sister product Youth Restore) has a high concentration of five different growth factors. We have sourced these from one of the world’s leading labs in peptide technology.
These GFs are molecularly identical to human placental GFs, but the formula is actually vegan (synthetically made and not from animal sources). Simply having GFs in a serum is not enough. Concentration and molecular structure, along with other chemical properties of the formulation, will influence whether it will do anything or not. The lab has engineered these to be able to penetrate to the correct depth and effect cellular action, which explains why we see incredible results. I have prescribed our CellDerma GF5 formula to patients aged 3 to 93.
For more information, visit cellderma.co.uk
