Avantamine offers an innovative solution to stabilise hypochlorous acid (HOCl), enabling higher concentrations and longer-lasting effectiveness on the skin.
Whenever your body is attacked by a pathogen (bacteria, fungus or virus) and develops a skin infection, your immune system triggers your white blood cells to produce a compound called hypochlorous acid. Hypochlorous acid selectively kills pathogens, promotes tissue repair, and then breaks down harmlessly. Our skin responds perfectly to it because nature evolved this particular pathogen-killing compound to protect us.
It’s the ideal antiseptic.
Unsurprisingly, hypochlorous acid (HOCl) skincare products are popping up on store shelves everywhere in sprays, toners, mists, and gels to treat eczema, itching, acne and more. Many of these skin ailments have a pathogen, usually bacteria, that is either driving or complicating the condition.
Acne, for example, is often the result of, or aggravated by, the presence of the bacteria Cutibacterium acnes. HOCl is an oxidising antiseptic that kills bacteria just like benzoyl peroxide, one of the most common acne treatments. The equivalent efficacy of HOCl and benzoyl peroxide for mild to moderate inflammatory acne was established in a clinical trial.¹ But HOCl has some benefits over benzoyl peroxide. HOCl’s biocompatibility means allergic reactions are unlikely, and HOCl also actively promotes skin barrier repair, making it less likely to dry out skin. Another clinical study showed HOCl had efficacy against itching associated with eczema.² Laboratory and clinical studies show multiple pathways by which HOCl modulates the skin inflammatory response and how effective HOCl is against pathogens, including the bacteria that contribute to acne and eczema.³
HOCl sounds like a great addition to skincare routines.
The one thing HOCl is missing
But the HOCl made outside our body in laboratories that then fill our store shelves is missing one key attribute: stability. Our bodies solve this by making HOCl on demand as needed, but outside the body, HOCl rapidly degrades. This instability creates two shortcomings for HOCl for use as a topical skin application. First, HOCl is consumed quickly without any desired long-lasting effects, thus requiring multiple doses a day to maintain efficacy. Secondly, HOCl can only be sold in bottles of liquid at low concentration.
Concentration drives efficacy. More is better, particularly when it comes to killing pathogens like bacteria. When the human immune system kills pathogens, HOCl is generated at a rate of 5,000ppm per minute. Today’s HOCl skin care products are sold at concentrations between 100ppm and 250ppm, less than one-tenth of what our bodies use. This is simply not enough HOCl to make a significant difference. That may be why HOCl at 500ppm failed to meet its primary endpoint for eczema treatment in a large Phase II clinical trial.⁴ The human body uses much higher concentrations of HOCl for a reason.
Introducing Avantamine
Avantamine is the first new antiseptic chemistry in half a century and the solution to HOCl’s shortcomings. AvantGuard, a biotech company focused on enhancing the efficacy of hypochlorous acid (HOCl), developed Avantamine to stabilise and deliver HOCl, enabling higher concentrations to remain active and effective on skin safely.
Even the Avantamine as an HOCl delivery system is bioinspired. In the 1990s, researchers understood that the body stabilises HOCl by pairing it with taurine, an amino acid present in high concentrations in white blood cells, forming taurine chloramine. Earlier scientists attempted to replicate taurine chloramine artificially, but still could not produce a shelf-stable solution. However, scientists at AvantGuard paired a chloramine with sulfonic acid, a standard skin care ingredient for exfoliation, skin renewal, and UV protection, to create Avantamine. Avantamine, then, stabilises HOCl in a compound that can continuously maintain HOCl on your skin as a topical treatment.
Avantamine differences
The Avantamine delivery system mitigates the two main shortcomings of HOCl (1) by allowing for high concentrations of HOCl to be applied as needed and (2) providing long-lasting efficacy.
Concentration
The stabilising nature of Avantamine makes it safe on skin at concentrations 100 times higher than current HOCl products. Again, most HOCl skin care products are sold with concentrations between 100ppm and 250ppm. By comparison, AvantGuard regularly tests concentrations of Avantamine from 3,000ppm to 12,000ppm, in the range of the human immune system, without causing skin irritation or delaying wound healing. That means Avantamine will perform better than HOCl products because there is more Avantamine available.
Duration
The other driver of efficacy is time. The longer you give something to work, the more likely it will. Avantamine acts as a slow-release mechanism for HOCl, extending the time that HOCl can be active on the skin. In simulated skin testing, a single 12,000ppm Avantamine application after ten hours still measured 140ppm, more than the starting concentration of many HOCl products. Another way to look at it, over a period of 24 hours, the consistency of Avantamine is comparable to re-applying HOCl every five minutes throughout the day. (Fig. 1) At the same time, Avantamine will simply wash off with water if desired. These properties make Avantamine the only antiseptic with strong residual efficacy, constantly lowering inflammation and killing bacteria.
Two other benefits come from the increased stability. Avantamine’s stabilising effect on HOCl reduces non-specific oxidation. Non-specific oxidation manifests itself most notably when fabrics bleach because of oxidation of the organic dye in fabric as opposed to oxidation of bacterial walls. A downside of all oxidative chemistries like HOCl and benzoyl peroxide is the potential for bleaching fabric. In our fabric bleaching testing, at 800ppm, HOCl will clearly bleach fabric. Whereas, at an almost 10X increase in concentration of 5,000ppm, Avantamine does not. (Fig. 2) A likely side benefit is that more pathogen-fighting material is left to kill pathogens using Avantamine than HOCl.
The second additional benefit is that the inherent stability enables Avantamine to be effective across a large swath of pH ranges, making the pH rules for Avantamine completely different. Standard HOCl is only viable between a pH of 4 and a pH of 6.5 before converting to other chemical forms. Avantamine has the same efficacy across a broad spectrum of pHs from 2 to 9. This enables greater flexibility in formulating appropriate products for different skin conditions. For example, during an eczema outbreak, skin pH often rises from the typical pH of 5 to 7 or more. Bringing the pH down speeds recovery, and while HOCl at pH 4 or 5 would help, a solution at pH 2 could help adjust skin pH faster. That is not possible with HOCl, but it is possible with Avantamine.
HOCl is good, Avantamine is better
HOCl is already gaining popularity as a new skincare product with the potential to treat conditions like acne, eczema, itching, psoriasis, and rosacea. But more is better. And, longer is better. With Avantamine, your skin gets the natural effects of HOCl, but potentially delivered at up to 100x stronger concentration and lasting hours longer with no compromise on safety or other side effects like bleaching of clothing. There is no secret drawback; Avantamine is simply an upgrade, the next step for healthy skin. Combining broad-spectrum antimicrobial efficacy with anti-inflammatory effects, HOCl is the perfect antiseptic, which makes mimicking the immune system with stable, on-demand, slow-release HOCl, i.e. Avantamine, a significant step forward in protecting your skin and you.
References
- Tirado-Sánchez, A.; Ponce-Olivera, R. M. Efficacy and tolerance of superoxidized solution in the treatment of mild to moderate inflammatory acne. A double-blinded, placebo-controlled, parallel-group, randomized, clinical trial. J Dermatolog Treat 2009, 20 (5), 289–292. DOI: 10.1080/09546630902973995 From NLM.
- Berman, B.; Nestor, M. An Investigator Blinded Randomized Study Evaluating HOCl in the Treatment of Atopic Dermatitis-Associated Pruritus. SKIN The Journal of Cutaneous Medicine 2017, 1, s40–s40.
- Hypochlorous Acid: Applications in Dermatology: Dermatologic applications of hypochlorous acid are reviewed, including infection prevention, wound care, scar management, inflammatory modulation, and treatment of atopic dermatitis and pruritus. Journal of Integrative Dermatology 2022, 1 (1). DOI: 10.64550/joid.1d4y5r09 (acccessed %2025/%08/%25).
- Nawrat, A. Realm Therapeutics unveils phase II failure of PR022 for severe eczema. Pharmaceutical Technology: 2018.
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