A Canadian PhD student is currently developing a tattoo removal cream that will lower the cost, time spent and pain of removing a tattoo.

Alec Falkenham, a PhD student at Nova Scotia's Dalhousie University, said the cream will get rid of tattoos without regrets.

Unlike lasers which target the pigments in tattoos, Falkenham's Bisphosphonate Liposomal Tattoo Removal (BLTR) cream targets macrophages, the immune system cells that work to remove foreign agents from your body.

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The macrophages recognize tattoo ink as "foreign" invaders. Some of these macrophages absorb the ink and then carry it to lymph nodes, where both cells and ink are destroyed.

The application of the cream involves none of the inflammation, redness, blistering or scarring side effects that traditional tattoo removal procedures have. He believes the procedure might even be anti-inflammatory. All you have to do is apply the topical cream to your skin.

"When new macrophages come to remove the liposome from cells that once contained pigment, they also take the pigment with them to the lymph nodes, resulting in a fading tattoo," Falkenham explain.

Falkenham estimates that using his tattoo removal cream would cost approximately US$4.50 to finally get rid of remove an unwanted four-by-four-inch tattoo.

He came up with the idea three years ago, when he was about to get his first tattoo and was simultaneously working on his Ph.D. proposal.

Interested in learning more about tattoos, he started to read and noticed that the very cells he and his colleagues had been researching to help heal the heart following heart disease-macrophages-were the same cells that hold on to tattoo ink.

He then brought the idea to his supervisor and helped him develop the idea into what would become his research.

The Canadian PhD student hopes that the cream will eventually become commercially available.

TagsTattoo, tattoo removal, Lasers, Bisphosphonate Liposomal Tattoo Removal, tattoo removal cream