Zelens Skincare????
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Tue Jun 13, 2006 5:16 am

Hi,

My first post - I just wanted to comment since I know a little about fullerenes, and thought it may be helpful. SWNT's are single-walled nanotubes, which are a carbon material related to fullerenes, but pretty different. They are long tubes of carbon, whereas C60 is a sphere of pure carbon.

As for C60 and benefits or concerns, I don't think there is much in the scientific literature that causes concerns. There has been medical research for years on them, and medical reserchers typically cite the lack of any toxic effects. The Rice work mentioned before was on nanoparticles of C60 (called Nano-C60), which is quite different from what is in Zelens (I have no relation to Zelens, and don't know how good the product is).

C60 is not a nanoparticle itself, but a molecule, about the same size as a large vitamin molecule like B-carotene. Some people (e.g., the Rice people) have made nanoparticles of C60, like nanoparticles can be made of titania, silica, etc., and they found some toxic results in fish, but, that work was recently shown to be flawed by their use of tetrahydrafuran to make the Nano-C60. A Japanese group duplicated the Rice work, without tetrahydrafuran, and duplicated the tox. tests, and found no adverse toxicity at all.

C60 itself has been studied by many groups for pharmaceutical applications, in various forms, and Merck licensed one molecule for study in neurology as an antioxidant.

Mitsubishi also has a company, called Vitamin C60 Bioresearch, and they sell a product in Japan for cosmetics based on C60. This is what is in Dr. Brandt I think, since Brandt says they get the material from Japan. Mitsubishi also has established a large amount of safety data on C60, and everything they found was okay.

So, in my experience, there isn't much to be scared about with C60. Researchers in labs using it make no precaution in terms of protecting their skin, etc., even though at first they treated it with caution since they didn't know anything about it yet. Then, studies were done showing that for example on mouse skin, it was safe, and everyone working with it now accepts it as safe as charcoal.

Smalley in fact did not work on C60 in the last 10 years or so of his life, he was working on SWNT's, so it is very unlikely that there is any correlation with his illness and C60. In fact, even when he discovered it and in the early years of his work with it, he would not have been exposed to much, since he is a physicist, and definitely would not have been in the lab with it (professors don't work in the lab, their grad. students do!) Many thousands of researchers have worked with C60 since it was discovered, and there is no evidence of anyone having any adverse health effects.

All of that being said, I don't know if Zelens is effective or not. C60 has been shown scientically to be just about the best radical scavenger (antioxidant) known to man, but whether Zelens is effective or not would depend on how much C60 is in it. C60 looks purple when it is in solution, and so one would think that the cream should be purple.

P.S. Russian researchers have claimed to use C60 to heal wounds in their skin, etc. for years, and a lot of scientists are very excited about the antioxidant benefits in drugs. C-Sixty Inc. is also working on drugs based on C60. So, I can say that Zelens is not all hype. The inventor is after all an Oxford professor, and there are some very serious scientific backing for his claims and also on the safety.

Wed Jun 21, 2006 4:17 am

TheresaL,

Yes, basically I agree with the way you summarized my position. I think it is hard to say for anything that there are "no" safety concerns, but I believe there are no more for C60 than anything else you see in the ingredients list of common cosmetics, and less concern than for many (BHT for example).

Remember that it has been about 15 years since C60 first began to be experimented with in labs, and a huge number of researchers have used it and published on it. In the years '91, '92, and '93, it was the most published on single subject in science.

Maybe the biggest convincing factor for me is that Mitsubishi Corp., which owns Vitamin C60 Bioresearch, worked with it particularly for cosmetics for about 4 years or so and preformed a large battery of safety tests, and they now sell a formulation to 30 or 40 skincare clinics in Japan. The Japanese are notoriously careful on safety issues. I know someone who helped introduce Coenzyme Q10 from Kaneka Corp. into the US, and they were exceedingly careful, and even didn't rely on the other data that existed.

The only thing that I know of that would be an issue with certain types of C60 is that it can be a photosensitizer in laboratory conditions. Many compounds are like this, especially fragrances in perfumes, Vitamin E with some people, and the Vitamin A derivatives (retinoids) with most people. However, I suspect that the products now on the market use a small enough amount so that is not a problem, or have checked it. That would be a standard safety test for all cosmetics, and in the EU, if it were not approved by a qualified toxicologist, it couldn't be legally sold.

The reason that I am aware of these issues is that as a scientist who previously worked with C60, when I saw the Rice work and the general scare tactics used to obtain funding, by lumping C60 into the nanoparticle category, making no real distinction on the "Nano-C60", not citing other safety data, etc., it made a big wave in the fullerene community. Most all of the C60 scientists were outraged, and now the articles are beginning to be published showing the flaws in that work. I have a recent one published in a respected journal if you would like to have it.

It is just a shame when scientists try to create a publicity bonanza through scare tactics based on poor science and inaccurate information. The simple reason is that by getting into the media, right or wrong, and making a big challenge, gives them the name and the citations needed to obtain more funding. That is what it is about, but I am confident that the truth will prevail. But, as is typical, the truth will come out as it is now, quietly in scientific journals.

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