Updates on the Latest Cosmetic Treatments in Medical Care

At the 2024 Elevate-Derm West Conference in Scottsdale, Arizona, Suneel Chilukuri, MD, FAAD, FACMS, spoke to Dermatology Times about his session titled, “What’s in Our Cosmetic Toolbox for the Medical Derm Provider?” During the presentation, Chilukuri spoke about at home treatments, upcoming therapies, and what he’s excited for in the near future.

TRANSCRIPT

Chilukuri: Hi, I'm Suneel Chilukuri, a board-certified dermatologist out of Houston, Texas, and I just finished the talk at Elevate Derm. What we talked about this time is: What are our aesthetic tools that we can use inside the realm of our medical patients? We see that there's a lot going on there. I focused mostly on acne scars and scars in general. We talked about rosacea, we talked about seborrheic dermatitis, and lots of neat things that we can do, many things that we can do at home, and some that we can do in the office. What you can buy on Amazon is a 0.25 millimeter roller, and you can use that once a week to improve the overall texture and quality of the skin. We realize it can help with acne scarring, but it can also help with active acne. What are some of the at home products that we can use? We see they're inexpensive, for less than $20 we're able to use a benzoyl peroxide foaming wash. We're able to use adapalene and get an amazing change without even seeing the dermatologist yet, or somebody in that practice. We talked about how we can use simple microneedling, in addition to radio frequency microneedling, to enhance those results of our scars. Both surgical as well as non-surgical scars, including acne, lots of things that we can do there. Of course, we talk about what's incoming. Some people have been asking about exosomes. What do we know about exosomes? It has to have a couple of things. It has to have a bi-lipid membrane.Typically, there's inflammatory markers that you can measure that. CD9, CD81, CD63.Make sure that your exomes actually have an exosome inside there, even though they're sold as.We talked about polynucleotides (PN), polydeoxyribonucleotides (PDR) and platelet-derived growth factor (pdgf). Polydeoxyribonucleotides, that's been famous now because of the salmon facial from Kim Kardashian. Does it work? I'll give you news: It definitely works. You don't necessarily need to inject it. That's not legal in the US anyway, but we can apply topically after microneedling, chemical peels, light resurfacing and get amazing changes. Really honored to be here, and I look forward to any questions that you have from the audience. Reach out any single time.

Dermatology Times: What upcoming treatments and therapies are you most excited about?

Chilukuri: In terms of what we can do with wound healing, it's pretty remarkable. We're seeing that it’s not just about prevention and treatment, it’s about regenerative medicine, so we're just scraping the tip of the iceberg. This is my 6th year in the space of regenerative medicine, and I'm probably about a decade behind what people are doing overseas. I'm excited to see what the future brings and how we're going to be able to affect our lives, our patients lives, in a much more positive way, from a cellular level, not a cosmetic level.

[Transcript has been edited for clarity.]