Inside Aesthetics Ep 153 The Story of Fillers | Per Winlof
Episode 153 hosts Per Winlof (Chief Design Expert of Galderma based in Uppsala, Sweden)
Per leads Galderma's global R&D and is responsible for all of their filler portfolio from the past, the present and into the future.
Back in 1990 Per was a microbiology student at university in Uppsala. To help supplement his income, he applied for a job at a very small biotech company founded by Dr Bengt Ågerup called 'Q-Med'. Although fillers were already available (as collagen-based products), Per and his team developed a completely new way of manufacturing fillers made out of a sugar-molecule using bacteria. They launched the world's first sugar-based dermal filler in 1996.
This new product completely revolutionised the world of facial aesthetics. To this day, approximately 95% of dermal fillers are based on this original technology. Q-Med were acquired by Galderma in 2010 and this podcast celebrates the 25th birthday of the world's first modern filler.
We explore:
- Per's background and why he applied for a job at Q-Med?
- Who started Q-Med and why?
- Who developed the original technology of sugar-based fillers and why they were invented in the first place?
- How the idea of facial fillers was conceived?
- The key differences between collagen fillers (available in the early 1990's) and the newer sugar-based fillers
- How sugar-based fillers are made in the lab?
- The advantages of fillers that don't contain animal products
- Why fillers come in a 1ml syringe?
- What cross-linking is?
- The beginnings of the science of filler rheology: how and why the properties of fillers can differ?
- Filler integration vs tissue integration
- Whether fillers dissolve or not?
- The key safety feature of sugar-based fillers: reversibility and the use of dissolving agents
- Whether Per gave us any clues about what's coming in the future?