Adam Friedman, MD, Professor and Chair of Dermatology at the George Washington University School of Medicine & Health Sciences in Washington, DC, is busy. In addition to his role as Department Chair, he sees patients, organizes (and speaks at) multiple medical meetings, publishes regularly, and hosts several podcasts. And that’s not all. Dr. Friedman is also a consumer and trade media darling and an inventor with two products on the market, and likely many, many more to come.
He sat down with The Dermatology Digest® to talk about inventorship, natural curiosity, and how it feels to see a product come to market after 20 years of research.
TDD: What does inventorship mean to you?
ADAM FRIEDMAN, MD: “We all have the ability to be inventors, and chances are we are already functioning as inventors without realizing it. When we think about scientific research, it really comes down to three simple things: knowing how to ask a question, being observant, and doing something about it. This is really the foundation of any good project, educational initiative, or invention.
TDD: What was your first foray as an inventor?
DR. FRIEDMAN: “I played around with a technology that was being used to study how hemoglobin goes from an oxygenated state (R) to a deoxygenated state (T) about 20-plus years ago in my father’s lab at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in The Bronx, NY. This reaction happens so fast due to cooperativity that you can’t really see it happen. You need to be able to know what and how it happens, the magic, to make artificial blood, which is what I was working on. This technology could trap this protein in the intermediate state. Here I was looking at this gel that could encapsulate a protein, and things (in this case, carbon monoxide or oxygen) could go in and out of the gel.”
TDD: And then?
DR. FRIEDMAN: “From there, I thought, ‘Well, why can’t we use this gel technology to put things in and control how they come out?’ I was working with melanin because it’s visible, and I could quantify how much would come out over time into solution. I was working with this jet-black paste, and I thought, ‘Is anyone really going to put this on their skin? How will this be commercially translatable?’ The paste was damp, so I thought to dry it out and lyophilize it. Being in an academic lab, I had access to all these cool tools. I expected to see a black nugget of melanin, but I came back to find a powder, a fine black powder made up of these invisible particles.”
TDD: That’s interesting. What happened next?
DR. FRIEDMAN: “I went to our imaging facility to see what it would look like under a scanning electron microscope. Sure enough, I had made nanoparticles or individual units that were in the nanometer range.”
TDD: Wow.
DR. FRIEDMAN: “I was like, ‘Well, I guess I do nanotechnology now,’ and this spurred 20-plus years of research to understand what I stumbled upon.”
TDD: That’s a long time.
DR. FRIEDMAN: “Don’t just observe and walk off. Be curious and say, ‘Well, why is this happening? What did I just do?’ You often stumble upon an invention, and then you actually go back in time to explain what you actually created. It doesn’t happen overnight. The mantra of 20-plus years from bench to bottle from a dermatology perspective is very real. If you’re talking about a drug, it could be easily 20-plus years and $20 million to get there.”
TDD: Catch us up. Where are we now with your nanotechnology delivery system?
DR. FRIEDMAN: “It has been through varying licensing deals with companies that were birthed and died. Now, it is finally in the hands of a group that knows what they’re doing called Zylö Therapeutics. This technology is now being utilized in commercially available products, including a haircare product by BosleyMD that encapsulates YuvaBio Y100, a natural ingredient derived from the Amla plant that supports mitochondrial function, potentially extending the hair-growth cycle. It is also used for a product now on the market called CielementsMD, which has nanoparticle-encapsulated cannabidiol cream, offering DNA protection from Ultraviolet A (UVA) radiation and skin photoaging mutations.”
TDD: Tell us more about the CielementsMD product and the research that backs up its use.
DR. FRIEDMAN: “We sourced CBD from a U.S. Food and Drug Administration company to marry what CBD could do if we could get through the skin with a technology that will hug the active and take it where it needs to be, in the skin through the protective armor of the stratum corneum. We showed in probably the most rigorous cannabinoid study in dermatology ever, which was published in the Journal of the American Academy of Dermatology, that we could prevent the expected DNA damage that would occur following UVA exposure. “We really wanted to construct a study that was not your typical over-the-counter (OTC) study. We wanted to get to the DNA level and really take the rigor of a U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) study into the OTC space with a model that we know is tried, true, and validated. And we did. We proved that the delivery of CBD with this nanotechnology has a biological impact. At 24 hours, 21% of participants had less observed erythema on nano-CBD-treated skin than on vehicle (VC) cream skin. Histologically, nano-CBD-treated skin had reduced UV-A-induced epidermal hyperplasia compared to VC. Immunohistochemistry detected reduced cytoplasmic/nuclear 8-oxoguanine glycosylase 1 staining in nano-CBD-treated skin compared with VC, and quantitative mtDNA polymerase chain reaction demonstrated that UV-A-induced deletion of ND4 and ND1 was significantly reduced by in vivo nano-CBD treatment compared with VC.”
TDD: How are you recommending people use this product?
DR. FRIEDMAN: “We went after becoming the best friend to sunscreen, meaning we are not aiming to replace sunscreen. We are filling in the gaps that sunscreen leaves open. Even when using sunscreen the right way, epidermal and dermal injury still occurs. We are playing mop-up. We are assuming that there is still going to be some damage, and this product is mitigating some of the physical injury to the keratinocytes and preventing that thickening of the skin and erythema that we see 24 hours after UV exposure. Now, we are marketing this product for twice-daily use. The most rewarding piece is not the revenue potential. It’s actually the fact that human beings are putting something on their skin that I invented as a medical student with my father.”
“The most rewarding piece is … actually the fact that human beings are putting something on their skin that I invented as a medical student with my father.”
TDD: What’s next?
DR. FRIEDMAN: “The plan is that this will set the stage for the use of nanocannabinoids to treat many disease states in dermatology. We hope that the launch and the revenue generated from it will fuel the prescription pipeline. CBD, theoretically based on preclinical data, should be very effective at treating chronic inflammatory skin diseases. There’s early evidence showing that it could be useful for psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and even acne.”
“ CBD, theoretically based on preclinical data, should be very effective at treating chronic inflammatory skin diseases. There’s early evidence showing that it could be useful for psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, and even acne.”
TDD: Any other promising compounds primed for this delivery system?
DR. FRIEDMAN: “A company has been created around the platform called Zylö Therapeutics. They are licensing this nanoparticle formulation, called Z pods, for many different indications. Zylö can embed an active ingredient into these particles, providing sustained delivery for 24+ hours. We are working with anandamide, an endocannabinoid, and using the same technology to develop a topical therapy for cutaneous lupus, a disease of endocannabinoid dysfunction (citation below). There’s no limit to what we can do with this now thoroughly validated and thoroughly investigated platform, which started as ‘Hey, I made nanoparticles.’”
TDD: How do you divide your time between clinic, academics, research, family, and other activities?
DR. FRIEDMAN: “No one can do it all, but if you’re going to try, you need to know how to delegate, and you need to have a team. Academia affords us the ability to create an infrastructure that allows us to be in many places at once. I have two full-time research fellows, medical students, and an incredible executive assistant.”
FOR FURTHER READING
- McCormick E, Han H, Abdel Azim S, et al. Topical nanoencapsulated cannabidiol cream as an innovative strategy combating UV-A-induced nuclear and mitochondrial DNA injury: A pilot randomized clinical study. J Am Acad Dermatol. 2024;91(5):855–862. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/39025264/
- McCormick ET, Draganski A, Chalmers S, et al. Nano-encapsulated anandamide reduces inflammatory cytokines in vitro and lesion severity in a murine model of cutaneous lupus erythematosus. Exp Dermatol. 2023;32(12):2072–2083. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37726950/
DISCLOSURES
Adam Friedman, MD, is the co-inventor of the Z-pod technology and an advisor for Zylö Therapeutics and Mino labs.
