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Praveen Kumar Vemula, left, and Jeffrey Karp demonstrate where the cream containing the nanoparticles could be applied.
Tiny particles only billionths of a meter in diameter—about two thousand would fit across the width of a human hair—could offer big hope in a small package to the millions of people who are allergic to the nickel in everything from jewelry to coins and cell phones, say scientists at BWH.
The team reports a new approach to preventing the common skin allergy in the April 3 online issue of Nature Nanotechnology.
Approximately ten to fifteen percent of the U.S. population, or more than 30 to 45 million people, plus many more worldwide, are allergic to the nickel found in many everyday objects. When it comes into contact with their skin, the metal causes a red, itchy rash.
However, even though some countries regulate the amount of the metal in certain products to limit exposure, there is no solution to the problem. “There have been approaches to developing creams with agents that bind the nickel before it can penetrate the skin, but these are not effective in most patients and can even be toxic when the agents themselves penetrate the skin, as most do,” said Jeffrey Karp, PhD, leader of the work and co-director of the Center for Regenerative Therapeutics at BWH. “People also sometimes coat their jewelry with nail polish to create a barrier between the skin and nickel ions, but this won’t prevent all exposures, such as handling coins or wearing a watch.”
Karp is himself allergic to nickel.
Now he and his colleagues, including R. Rox Anderson, a dermatologist at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, have found that nanoparticles containing calcium could offer a safe solution to the problem. When applied to the skin in a cream, the nanoparticles efficiently capture the nickel, preventing it from making its way into the body. Further, the nanoparticles themselves were designed so that they cannot penetrate the skin. The cream with its nickel can then be easily washed off with water.
“Despite barrier creams, anti-inflammatory drugs and attempts to avoid nickel, this [metal] is still the most common cause of allergic skin reactions. Nanoparticles that bind to [the nickel] allergens but do not penetrate the skin offer a new strategy. That’s big hope in a small package,” Anderson said.
“We expect that a person could simply apply the cream just as they would hand cream,” said Praveen Kumar Vemula, PhD, of BWH, the first author of the paper.
Toward a Solution
The idea for tackling the problem began when Karp, a specialist on nanoparticles, met Anderson at a dinner. Afterward, Karp sat at his computer thinking about how he could potentially work with the accomplished dermatologist to tackle medical problems. As he pondered, he looked at his hands, which were red and itchy from his nickel allergy. Could he and Anderson find a nontoxic, practical way to prevent nickel from penetrating the skin using nanoparticles?
The team began by focusing on compounds containing calcium, which are known to sequester nickel (some are used in the treatment of water). Next, they explored whether these compounds were available as nanoparticles. Karp knew that the tiny particles could potentially allow efficient nickel capture, thanks to their very high surface area.
The team limited its search to nanoparticles within a certain size range. “We wanted them to be large enough so they could not penetrate the skin, yet small enough to present a very large surface area for capturing nickel,” Vemula said. They ultimately decided on particles between 70 and 500 nanometers. Finally, to cut the time involved in bringing a new technology to market, the team only explored nanoparticles already designated by the Food and Drug Administration as being generally recognized as safe for use in humans.
They found two compounds that met these criteria (calcium carbonate and calcium phosphate), added them to a common emollient to create a cream and tested them under a variety of experimental conditions. They then conducted the tests with concentrations of nickel much higher than would be found in everyday situations.
“We were able to demonstrate that the particles could indeed capture nickel with high efficiency and prevent inflammation,” Karp said. Further, “we needed 11-fold less nanoparticles to get the same effect” as another common nickel-capture agent. (A significant drawback of the latter: it can penetrate the skin, and even small amounts can cause local and systemic toxicity.)
All results suggest that nanoparticles can effectively prevent the penetration of nickel into the skin, and may therefore prevent nickel-induced contact dermatitis, the team concluded in the Nature Nanotechnology paper.
The team has a patent on the work, which was funded by BWH. Vemula is a recipient of an entrepreneur postdoctoral fellowship from the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.