-
Question about Lamellar Gel Network (LGN)
Hi all amazing people,
Been reading up on LGN. Since Im not a professionally trained personal care formulator, but am a chemist involved in pharmaceutical compounding. Something is grabbing my attention recently… apparently LGN formulation can speed up wound healing since it mimics the skin lamellar structure? Is this true? If so, how?
Also, how would I go about formulating a hand cream adopting the principles of LGN formulation? Can anyone give me an insight or deeper understanding of this subject please.
The more I know, the scarier it gets! The more I know, the more I know I don’t know…
Thanks all.
-
11 Replies
-
Are you familiar with the search bar in the top right corner?
Use that, and you will have hours upon hours of great reading. -
I don’t see too much (or at least close enough) similarities between LGN (often called alpha phase) and skin but I get why cosmetic industries might extrapolate from one to the other.HERE‘s a quick reading about the subject. And, as mentioned by @Graillotion, you’ll find a fair bit of posts here on CST.Certain lamellar structures will be similar to the mortar and cement between corneocytes and thereby positively support healing but that heavily depends on the used emulsifiers and hence is only true for a very few products. -
Thank you all! Really appreciate it.
-
Is this article on the same thing?And it makes me wonder… Wouldn’t the ancient stearic/stearate self-thickened vanishing cream have the same “tech”? Would you say suppliers selling “liquid crystal” emulsifiers are scamming like what were made about “micellar cleanser”?Or are there truely something special about them?
-
You can probably just choose your own combination of materials to make your own liquid crystal emulsifier combination, however you probably also need to check to ensure that they form the maltese cross under the microscope.
It’s just convenient to use a ready combo that has tested with specs and a skin feel profile than making your own in someway. Personally i won’t say that it’s scamy like selling soapy water.
Ref https://knowledge.ulprospector.com/4712/pcc-lamellar-gel-network-technology-a-primer/
-
steamedrice said:Hi all amazing people,
Been reading up on LGN. Since Im not a professionally trained personal care formulator, but am a chemist involved in pharmaceutical compounding. Something is grabbing my attention recently… apparently LGN formulation can speed up wound healing since it mimics the skin lamellar structure? Is this true? If so, how?
Thanks all.
It’s more focussed on the lipid arrangement of the skin surface so helping provide a barrier which, I guess, could aid wound healing as the barrier would be ‘accounted for’.
I guess if you couple that with wound healing drugs then there’s potential to speed up wound healing further.
My MChem project touched on angiogenesis in deep wounds and everything pointed towards drug-doped collagen as implants to speed up healing of deep/extensive wounds.The article I read briefly on this was The Influence of Co-Surfactants on Lamellar Liquid
Crystal Structures Formed in Creams by Delaram Ahmadi et al.
Pharmaceutics 2020, 12, 864; doi:10.3390/pharmaceutics12090864 -
zetein said:…Is this article on the same thing?…And it makes me wonder… Wouldn’t the ancient stearic/stearate self-thickened vanishing cream have the same “tech”? Would you say suppliers selling “liquid crystal” emulsifiers are scamming like what were made about “micellar cleanser”?Or are there truely something special about them?This article is exactly about that. However, we’ve came a long way in the last 30 years since that publication. Not that we always learned new things rather than start to understand the old, often neglected, insights better and sometimes seemingly arbitrary and freak discoveries turn out to be the norm.It’s not a ‘tech’, it’s simply a type of emulsion which is neglected by many (small scale producers and scientists in particular) but becomes increasingly prominent mostly due to its flexibility, ease of manufacturing, stability, independence of HLB… it’s by no means scamming. It’s not better or newer, it’s simply a type of emulsion often neglected in the past because of poor scientific interest (it’s not those neat round spheres where you can do maths with) and even poorer predictability (and on the other hand the no-need to predict too!). It’s maybe THE form for emulsions on a practical scale because it’s a mixture of droplets/spheres, pools of liquids, and those crystal-like ‘sheets/lamellae’ composed of an often undefined mixture of surfactants, co-surfactants and lipids (and likely hydrophilics such as glycols). With growing scientific background, the need for new things (on the seller and buyer sides!), pseudo-scientific interest of consumers and producers, and likely other factors including green/clean ingredients, and the death of HLB (yes, HLB is dead, cosmetics producers just haven’t accepted that they’ve been riding a dead horse for decades whilst, I’m quite positive, raw ingredient manufacturers knew it for a long time) made this type of emulsion/emulsifier system a real thing, a thing which can be sold/bought. This system may, like everything else in cosmetics, be sold as ‘science’ and ‘better’ and ‘eternal youth’ as is done with micellar water… but honestly, it’s more valuable and way more prevalent than that. BTW micellar water would be an archetypical o/w emulsion variety taught at universities because it follows the rules and is pseudo-predictable (at least explainable/calculable in hindsight). Lamellar systems don’t and aren’t and that’s why they were treated like orphans though they are probably/likely the predominant emulsion type consumers use these days. Sure, those droplet type emulsions are still very frequent simply because they are usually part of a lamellar gel network emulsion
. Apart from lotions and heavily gelled creams, you’ll have a hard time finding products which do not, to some degree, contain lamellar structures. As a side-note, they’re not always visible as maltese crosses but may diffract polarised light in different ways and, for a layman, aren’t necessarily distinguishable from ‘solid fat content’ (= fat needles/platelets and the like which also diffract polarised light -> true vanishing creams are extremely rich in these and will likely mask lamellar structures under a light microscope!).So, I don’t know if vanishing creams contain lamellar gel networks though it’s well possible. They pre-date current knowledge and are now outdated and hence no longer of any scientific interest. You’d have to ask a cosmetic archaeologist 🙂 . -
Benz3ne said:…It’s more focussed on the lipid arrangement of the skin surface so helping provide a barrier which, I guess, could aid wound healing as the barrier would be ‘accounted for’.
I guess if you couple that with wound healing drugs then there’s potential to speed up wound healing further.
…Lamellar gel networks are a type of architecture (likely abundantly) present in cosmetic formulations, they aren’t the emulsion like a micellar water is in fact micelles in water. A lamellar gel network is usually just part of a product, like bones being just a part of what holds our body together.These lamellae may look similar to the cement and mortar between keratinocytes but most have noting to do with it and will not interact with it other than petroleum jelly does. If you want to mimic these skin structures, you need similar constituents e.g. a mixture of ceramides/fatty acids/cholesterol or other synthetic/plant based analogues thereof. There’s scientific evidence showing that such products speeds up would healing but only if there is stratum corneum present (simply because these lamellar structures are only part of the SC, not deeper skin layers).Different types of formulations can help with drug delivery, AFAIK lamellar gel networks are commonly not regarded as such simply because they aren’t a vehicle like micelles nor do they show any advantage or depot effect like microemulsions or solid lipid nanoparticles and what not. If you were to investigate pharmaceutical creams you’d likely find out that quite a few of these actually contain such lamellar gel structures but nobody ever cared. You can’t package/load a drug into a lamellar gel structure like you can into liposomes. It’s just a 3D network spanning throughout a cream like xanthan or carbomer to thicken the water phase.BTW I’m well aware of the study you cited: It’s one of those basic
research investigations right now completely useless for end users. It
may help understanding and planning the future but right now, only a
fool would create an oil-free cream using only water, SDS and cetyl-
and/or stearyl alcohol. Add oil or an active and the whole system tilts
towards an unpredictable state. -
Pharma said:Benz3ne said:…It’s more focussed on the lipid arrangement of the skin surface so helping provide a barrier which, I guess, could aid wound healing as the barrier would be ‘accounted for’.
I guess if you couple that with wound healing drugs then there’s potential to speed up wound healing further.
…Lamellar gel networks are a type of architecture (likely abundantly) present in cosmetic formulations, they aren’t the emulsion like a micellar water is in fact micelles in water. A lamellar gel network is usually just part of a product, like bones being just a part of what holds our body together.These lamellae may look similar to the cement and mortar between keratinocytes but most have noting to do with it and will not interact with it other than petroleum jelly does. If you want to mimic these skin structures, you need similar constituents e.g. a mixture of ceramides/fatty acids/cholesterol or other synthetic/plant based analogues thereof. There’s scientific evidence showing that such products speeds up would healing but only if there is stratum corneum present (simply because these lamellar structures are only part of the SC, not deeper skin layers).Different types of formulations can help with drug delivery, AFAIK lamellar gel networks are commonly not regarded as such simply because they aren’t a vehicle like micelles nor do they show any advantage or depot effect like microemulsions or solid lipid nanoparticles and what not. If you were to investigate pharmaceutical creams you’d likely find out that quite a few of these actually contain such lamellar gel structures but nobody ever cared. You can’t package/load a drug into a lamellar gel structure like you can into liposomes. It’s just a 3D network spanning throughout a cream like xanthan or carbomer to thicken the water phase.BTW I’m well aware of the study you cited: It’s one of those basic
research investigations right now completely useless for end users. It
may help understanding and planning the future but right now, only a
fool would create an oil-free cream using only water, SDS and cetyl-
and/or stearyl alcohol. Add oil or an active and the whole system tilts
towards an unpredictable state.Thanks for the detailed response Pharma. I think the approach I was taking was more along the lines of ‘if the body recognises the structure as a barrier for skin, does it afford less time/resource to rebuilding a (possibly) non-existent barrier’. This does go somewhat against the evidence you mention regarding wound healing only if there is stratum corneum present, but this could be sufficient for addressing small wounds, perhaps?
I think we’re also deviating from the original question when going deeper into which more common/researched drug delivery methods are viable versus a hypothesis of a drug-containing lamellar structure being viable. The ‘would it help wound healing?’ question doesn’t really go into deep/extensive/muscular vs surface wounds vs burns type questions, but is a very broad question.
Xanthan and carbomer do have the potential to aid delivery though, right? If the thickening agent is also film forming then there’s scope for prolonged delivery of actives, or reactivation in contact with water, or similar. In these cases there potential for assistance from an otherwise benign ingredient.
Agreed regarding the unpredictable state - it’s a suggestion rather than anything made with concrete evidence on my part. In the same vein, I doubt it would be impossible to create a doped lamellar structure, even if the basic, ‘foolish’ mixture + active would be unstable/unpredictable. The specifics are beside the point here.
The study does allude to things like fatty acids being included which touches lightly on your comments about actually mimicking the skin’s topology.All-in-all, I’m enjoying this discussion!
-
Benz3ne said:…‘if the body recognises the structure as a barrier for skin, does it afford less time/resource to rebuilding a (possibly) non-existent barrier’. This does go somewhat against the evidence you mention regarding wound healing only if there is stratum corneum present, but this could be sufficient for addressing small wounds, perhaps?
I think we’re also deviating from the original question when going deeper into which more common/researched drug delivery methods are viable versus a hypothesis of a drug-containing lamellar structure being viable. The ‘would it help wound healing?’ question doesn’t really go into deep/extensive/muscular vs surface wounds vs burns type questions, but is a very broad question.
Xanthan and carbomer do have the potential to aid delivery though, right? If the thickening agent is also film forming then there’s scope for prolonged delivery of actives, or reactivation in contact with water, or similar. In these cases there potential for assistance from an otherwise benign ingredient.
…
All-in-all, I’m enjoying this discussion!I’d say, if it mimics/replaces a building block of our body, it takes less time/resources for the body to heal simply because you provide the template. Like a synthetic skin or bone graft. Depending on the tissue you want to replace, different matrices are used. Check out the latest in wound healing and skin replacement products, so called ‘epithelial edge advancement’. These may contain living cells from humans and/or animals and be single or multi-layered and hence replace dermis and/or epidermis.
Common creams do not penetrate deep, though they may serve as depot, carrier, and penetration enhancer for actives. This means that a cream can, with a few exceptions, only replace/complement material between keratinocytes. In case of ceramides, they only work with living cells still present and they do work by replacing what’s lacking. This ‘fast healing’ allows skin to regrow normally and healthy, the effect is sustained, skin is healed. This is not the case with liquid paraffin or petroleum jelly which does penetrate as deep and also fills out the gaps between keratinocytes leading to a replacement and ‘instant fix’ but it’s marked dissimilarity with skin lipids disturbs the natural order and the effect is only present as long as that goo is present. Sure, both may lead to healing by reducing TEWL but one is physiological and performs better. The real reason behind is unknown and may, as usual with cosmetics and cosmetics funded university research, be more of a marketing ploy or biased/forced result.Xanthan and carbomer may have potential… as good or bad as every ingredient you can imagine… it all depends on what ingredient you plan on using in which type of product. There is no one single ingredient which does it all. If the film is too dry or the interaction film/polymer with active ingredient is stronger than the interaction of active with skin, then that film will form a depot, a depot that active will remain within until you wash it off.Benign ingredient? Unless you manufacture cytostatic drugs, chemical weapons, or voodoo poultices I really hope you’re not using malign ingredients! LoL!Me too! Always in for a deeper, interesting conversation, even if it’s fairly OT. -
Wow… i really enjoy reading comments like these. Very insightful. Thanks all!
Log in to reply.