Artes Medical Hopes to Raise Eyebrows with Opening of Wrinkle Filler Plant in San Diego

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Researched by Industrialinfo.com (Industrial Information Resources, Incorporated; Houston, Texas). Artes Medical Incorporated (San Diego, California) has just opened a 35,000 square foot cGMP manufacturing plant in San Diego. The privately-held specialty pharmaceutical and medical device company will use the new facility to manufacture ArteFill, a next generation product to Artecoll. Artecoll is an aesthetic medical product used to treat a wide variety of facial wrinkles and scars.

Artes received preliminary FDA approval last year for Artecoll, which, upon final approval, will be the only FDA-approved permanent injectable implant for the correction of naso-labial folds or smile lines. ArteFill contains precision-filtered microspheres suspended in ultra-purified collagen and will be manufactured in the San Diego plant in accordance with rigorous FDA quality requirements. As discussed in Industrialinfo.com's 2005 Pharmaceutical Industry Forecast, the trend to discover and manufacture products that improve one's appearance and delays the aging process is very entrenched and is expected to continue to grow in the coming years.

Current dermal fillers, including Zyderm, Cosmoderm, Restlyane and Hylaform, are temporary, as they are absorbed and metabolized by a patient within a matter of months. When ArteFill is injected, the microscopic spheres stimulate the body's own natural collagen production to replace the purified collagen, achieving lasting wrinkle correction. Final FDA approval is expected later this year, when Artes will launch the product in the United States.

There have been a number of recent news stories regarding the inappropriate use of these types of aesthetic products, administered by unlicensed individuals to groups of people in private homes. These treatments are especially dangerous to the consumer and possibly illegal. FDA-regulated aesthetic medical products are specifically designed to be administered by highly skilled and professionally trained physicians, such as plastic surgeons, cosmetic surgeons and dermatologists and are intended only for treatment in a professional medical setting.

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Industrialinfo.com is the leading provider of global industrial market research. We specialize in helping companies develop information solutions to maximize their sales and marketing efforts.