Bemotrizinol and UVA Protection: Why This New Sunscreen Filter Matters

Dr Jessica Weiser discusses the FDA approval of bemotrizinol (Tinosorb S), the first new sunscreen active ingredient added to the US sunscreen monograph in more than 20 years. Learn how this next-generation UV filter enhances broad-spectrum protection, improves UVA coverage, and may benefit patients concerned about melasma, photoaging, pigmentation, and skin cancer prevention while expanding cosmetically elegant sunscreen options for diverse skin types.

Transcript

Hi, my name is Dr Jessica Weiser. I'm a board-certified dermatologist, and I have practices both in SoHo in New York City and in Aspen, Colorado. I am an assistant clinical professor of dermatology at Columbia University and a clinical instructor at the Montefiore-Einstein Medical Center.

The FDA has approved the first new sunscreen active ingredient in more than 20 years. How significant is this milestone for dermatologists and consumers?

Dr Weiser: So this is actually a very significant milestone. So the US has had a pretty stagnant list of active ingredients for sunscreens for about 27 years now. And so the rest of the world has sort of made major advancements in the formulations and the active ingredients that are available. And we've been seeing that throughout Europe and Asia for a long time. And so having this new chemical sunscreen available that offers us full-spectrum UVA protection and excellent UVB protection is really pretty remarkable for the U.S. market. And we're very excited as a new positive step towards better, higher-quality sun protection available here.

What is bemotrizinol, and why have dermatologists and photobiology experts been advocating for access to this filter in the United States?

Dr Weiser: So, bemotrizinol is a chemical sunscreen ingredient. It has a very long name, abbreviated by most people as BEMT, and it's marketed by 3 different trade names in both Europe and Asia. It's most commonly known as Tinosorb S. The reason that this product has been advocated as a new addition to the U.S. marketplace is because it has a very specific formulation. It goes on very sheer, but it provides really excellent sun protection. And so we're able to then apply it to a very broad range of skin tones and skin types, but we're able to really prevent the UVA-associated pigmentation and collagen breakdown and the UVB-associated sunburn. And so having this full range of coverage of all the different UV rays is really remarkable and something that we're very excited to introduce in the U.S. marketplace that hasn't been previously available.

How does bemotrizinol compare with the UV filters currently available in US sunscreens, particularly when it comes to UVA protection?

Dr Weiser: So right now we have a whole bunch of chemical sunscreen ingredients that provide almost exclusively UVB protection in the United States. So if you think about oxybenzone and avabenzone and octanoxate, most of those sunscreens give good protection against sunburn, but they give very minimal, we would say sort of mediocre at best protection against UVA. Our best UVA filter in the United States right now was zinc oxide and in some sunscreens also titanium dioxide. But a lot of people really don't love these mineral sunscreens because of the white cast or sort of a chalky residue that they can leave behind. And so bemotrizinol is going to give us probably the broadest UVA protection that we've ever seen in the United States in a chemical active ingredient. And so it's very exciting to see that it covers. the full spectrum of UVB, but it now also extends and covers the full spectrum of those deeper penetrating UVA rays as well.

Patients often focus on SPF alone. What should clinicians be teaching patients about UVA vs UVB protection, and why does broad-spectrum coverage matter?

Dr Weiser: So SPF, or sun protection factor, is purely a measure of UVB protection and has absolutely no indication of the UVA rating of a product. So this is essentially how well a sunscreen is able to protect you against getting a sunburn. But what we've now noticed, if you look at packaging from Europe and from Asia, there is something called a PA plus rating. And PA plus ranges from plus one to four plus, where plus one provides sort of mild UVA protection, plus two is moderate, plus three is good UVA protection, and plus four is really excellent UVA protection. And so these UVA rays are the ones that actually penetrate deeper, and they're associated with indirect DNA damage, but they're also very closely associated with pigment production. And so a lot of patients complain about pigmentation and wrinkles and find that our US filters aren't doing a great job with that because they have high SPF, but they have poor UVA coverage. So this addition of bemotrizinol is going to give us the ability to actually provide a very high PA plus rating, probably PA3 or PA4 plus on these newer products. And so we're going to be able to provide more complete protection against pigmentation, against accelerated aging, against collagen breakdown, and against that DNA damage that we're worried about long-term as well.

Will this approval change the way you recommend sunscreens to patients, or does it primarily expand the range of effective options available?

Dr Weiser: So I think that the way that we recommend sunscreen won't necessarily change because right now when a patient comes into my practice, I'm encouraging them to use a sunscreen that is broad spectrum and one that they like to apply every single day. So what I always tell people is that the absolute best sunscreen you can use is the one that you like to put on daily. We also encourage reapplication. And so for an average sunscreen, if you are not sweating, you're not getting in a pool or an ocean, an average sunscreen provides about two hours of protection. so we do encourage our patients to reapply their sunscreens regularly. When you have sweating or pool or swimming involved in that, most sunscreen packaging has either a 40 or 80 minute water resistant rating on it. And so we're still going to encourage patients to look at those ratings and to really pay attention to those numbers that your sunscreens are providing. The newest thing that we're going to notice is that we're thinking that this new sunscreen is going to increase compliance with that daily sunscreen application. And the idea is that if we can have more patients who are less resistant to wearing daily sunscreen, We're going to open up the spectrum of how many people are putting it on every day as part of their skincare regimen because it's not leaving a cast, because it is giving them full protection, because they realize that it has the benefits and the formulation to make it an elegant daily application.

Are there specific patient populations—such as those with a history of skin cancer, melasma, or significant photodamage—that may particularly benefit from sunscreens containing bemotrizinol?

Dr Weiser: So I think that, the short and long answer is that everyone can benefit from this, really. This is going to be a product that is going to work on all different skin types and all different skin tones, as I mentioned, because of the formulation. But I think that because we're able to now target pigmentation in a better way than we were able to, and to target aging and wrinkling in a way that we were not able to as easily before, I do think that this will be more interesting for patients who have a history of melanoma, which is a pigment-related condition or patients who have melasma, which is another pigment concern of many, many patients. The idea that we're going to able to more completely block those UVA rays is going to give patients sort of the added enhanced benefit of less aging of the skin, less pigment of the skin. But I think across the board, since it is able to protect against sunburn and it is able to protect against pigmentation and wrinkling or photo damage, that really I think that pretty much everyone would be a candidate to add this type of of a sunscreen to their daily regimen.

As patients head into the summer months, what are the top 3 things they should look for when choosing a sunscreen, regardless of the active ingredients?

Dr Weiser: I say this all the time, but the best sunscreen is the sunscreen you use every single day. And so that won't change. I think that if you find a product that you love, that is your product. It doesn't matter what it contains or how much of what active ingredient it contains. If you're willing to put it on every day and you're willing to reapply it, my top piece of advice is find one that you like, that you're able to use consistently and on repeat. So that is always my top recommendation. The second thing to look for is broad spectrum coverage. Remember, we really want to protect the skin against skin cancer. We really want to protect the skin against sunburn, which is one of the leading triggers or causes of melanoma, which obviously is the biggest concern we have in the skincare world. But we also want something that's going to help fight against pigmentation and wrinkling because people feel, that's what they noticed. Not everyone is going to develop skin cancer, but inevitably we all are going to age and that UV radiation and the free radical damage associated with UV radiation is going to affect all of us. And so looking for that broad spectrum coverage will be number two. And the third thing is being really mindful of what your packaging says. What is the expiration date on it? What are the active ingredients? How much zinc oxide is in your product? Does it have a combination of chemical ingredients? Does it have physical and chemical ingredients. Make sure that your sunscreen is giving you the protection you think it is giving you. Makeup that contains sunscreen is generally not adequate for proper sun protection. And so we really want people to focus on this idea of applying a sunscreen that they like, that they're going to use consistently, that works with their other skincare, that potentially provides a foundation underneath their makeup in a nice way. We want it to work with your daily life. And if it's not doing that, find a different product.

Do you see this approval as the beginning of a new era for sunscreen innovation in the United States, and what developments would you like to see next?

Dr Weiser: So I think that the most important thing is to say, Great job. We do have a new FDA approval. We're very excited about this. But that does not mean that we are not light years behind Europe and Asia on our sunscreen front. The number of active ingredients that are available in the international markets is just so far exceeding what we currently have in the United States that I'm hoping that this first approval is going to be our beacon of hope, that we're going to have a long line of FDA approvals coming down the pipeline over the next few years. The science is out there. There is so much excellent sun protection science that already exists. We just need to figure out how to get more of it onto the U.S. shelves so that we can encourage more consistent sun protection. I think that we're living in a very strange era where we have a very, very high awareness of sun damage and what the sun can do. But we're also living in a time where it's very trendy to get sunburns and tan lines and, you know, sort of that peak UV index. And that is intentional damage to the skin. I think we need to be educating our youth about the long-term implications of the decisions that they make as teenagers and 20-somethings, because that's the damage that long-term is leading to skin cancer. It's leading to accelerated aging. It's leading to pigmentation and long-term concerns. And they're much harder to fix than they are to prevent. So if we can encourage our young Americans to get ahead of the sun protection journey now, we're going to find that down the road that people are much ahead of the curve and there's a lot less repair work and more preventative work that we can be doing.