A Nanoengineer Teamed Up With Rihannas Tattoo Artist To Make Smarter Ink

From KFF Health News

BOULDER, Colo. - For nanoengineer Carson Bruns, crazy science moments happen often. A few months ago, he was testing his latest arm invention in his lab at the University of Colorado-Boulder and asked a colleague for help.

“Okay, let's get tattoos. “Can you help us today?” She said.

The tattoo is like a dot, a small blue dot. But he can turn it on and off. Just like a mood ring changes color with temperature, this tattoo also changes with light: UV light to turn it on, daylight (or even a flashlight) to turn it off.

“You can go to court and turn it off, then go to a party and turn it on. Then go to grandma's house and turn it off,” says Bruns, who is part of the university's ATLAS Institute, which prides itself on developing unusual ideas.

Bruns started a company with tattoo artist Keith "Bang Bang" McCurdy, a former graduate student. Early next year, they plan to introduce their first product, Magic Ink, to a select group of artists. In the long term, business partners hope for smart tattoos with health benefits, but cosmetics are cheaper and easier to access for consumers than medical devices. So this is where they start.

The new ink will hit the market at a time when there is an influx of cosmetic fixatives. The FDA steps in and issues a recall if the ink causes a bacterial outbreak. However, it has not traditionally exercised regulatory authority over tattoo inks as it does with other products that enter the body. (Tattoo ink doesn't even have to be sterile.) But under the Cosmetic Modernization Act of 2022, the FDA is expanding its authority over tattoo manufacturers. The Agency is now accepting comments on the draft tattoo ink formulation guidelines.

“To be honest, I don't think the FDA or the tattoo ink industry knows what it's going to be like,” said John Swierk, a chemist at the State University of New York-Binghamton. However, he said the law means "the FDA has a new right to ensure that labeling is accurate and that good manufacturing practices are followed."

According to Bruns, Magic Ink is made of ink particles covered in Plexiglas beads, the same polymethyl methacrylate material found in dermal fillers that people use to plump their lips. Dermal fillers are FDA approved, while tattoo ink can feel like a black box.

Swierk said many of the tattoo pigments currently in use have been on the market for a long time, giving some users a degree of reassurance about their safety. But new material brings with it new unknowns.

“When someone gets a tattoo with Magic Ink, they have to accept some uncertainty about what the future holds for that ink,” Swierk said.

Bruns recently received funding from the National Science Foundation to study which size and type of nanoparticles are least likely to irritate the immune system and are most likely to stay where they are planted. The immune system is known to attract parts of the tattoo ink to the lymph nodes and cause them to turn blue and green.

While Magic Ink is a fun party trick, Bruns and his colleagues have developed other inks that serve a broader purpose: making tattoos usable.

Bruns and his colleagues have developed one that changes color when exposed to gamma radiation: they believe it could one day serve as an internal light meter. Another ink appears when it's time to apply sunscreen. He developed another dye as a permanent sunscreen. None of this is available to consumers, although permanent sun protection is the furthest thing. This dye was tested on a small group of mice; others were tested on pigskin.

Bruns started a company called Hyprskn a few years ago when Bang Bang came across his work and suggested they join forces.

The name Bang Bang may not be familiar to you, but the tattoos he's got are quite noticeable: they can be seen under Rihanna, on Miley Cyrus, and in front of LeBron James, among others. It seems like Bang Bang loves technology.

“I feel like saying hello and paying with AmEx or walking to my car and him knowing it's me,” he said. Or, he continued, it could even have health applications, such as being able to alert you whether your blood sugar level is high or low simply by looking at the color of your tattoos.

From a scientific point of view, the road is still long. If tattoo ink were to make the leap from cosmetics to medicine, it would have to jump through all sorts of regulatory hurdles.

Contact Tom Corwin at 843-214-6584. Follow him on Twitter @AUG_SciMed.

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