Skin cancer treatment may improve with new tattoo ink!

Tattoos can have medical applications too.

New York: Researchers have developed a new tattoo ink that can better help in surgical treatment of patients with a form of skin cancer much more than the commercially available tattoo pigments.

This ink is said to glow only under certain light conditions and disappears later. 

Tattoos also used by the medical community for precisely demarcating future treatment landmarks and are especially important for identifying biopsy sites of nonmelanoma skin cancer (NMSC) patients as they typically have to wait up to three months between a biopsy confirming their condition and treatment. 

However, the commercially available tattoo pigments inks can cause discomfort and inflammation.

The new ink developed by researchers led by Kai Chen University of Southern California is time-limited, as per IANS. 

The study was published in the journal ACS Nano.

To quote from acs.org - "Kai Chen, Gary S Chuang, Hsian-Rong Tseng and colleagues wanted to develop a safer, more patient-friendly option. The researchers created a time-limited pigment by cross-linking fluorescent supramolecular nanoparticles. Under ambient lighting, the nanoparticles are invisible, which would avoid unwanted markings in a patient’s skin. But the pigment glows under light shining at a wavelength of 465 nanometers, so doctors would be able to use a special light to see the dye. Testing in mice showed that tattoos created with these nanoparticles didn’t cause inflammation and lasted for three months. This would be long enough to mark a spot from biopsy through treatment for a non-melanoma patient."

(With Agency inputs)