--- title: What Causes Scarring? Researchers Now Know description: We all form scars, but most of us don’t want them. There may soon be a way to make them disappear canonical: https://time.com/3825046/how-to-get-rid-of-scars/ author: Alice Park article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-16T17:27:54.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-22T06:27:00.354Z article:section: Health og:title: The Strange Way a Diabetes Drug May Help Skin Scars og:description: We all form scars, but most of us don’t want them. There may soon be a way to make them disappear og:url: https://time.com/3825046/how-to-get-rid-of-scars/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1d89cf9d35895475/6987eb740b72e34e126e1865/128630038.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3851 og:image:height: 2166 og:image:alt: 128630038 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Strange Way a Diabetes Drug May Help Skin Scars twitter:description: We all form scars, but most of us don’t want them. There may soon be a way to make them disappear twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt1d89cf9d35895475/6987eb740b72e34e126e1865/128630038.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The Strange Way a Diabetes Drug May Help Skin Scars > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. 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Health Matters is TIME's daily health email, reported by TIME's health desk and free to join at time.com/newsletters. It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free daily newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators.  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Apr 16, 2015 5:27 PM UTC  Keloid scars are common on the upper trunk of young women. A keloid is an enlarged scar that grows beyond its original boundaries. It can itch, cause pain or be tender to the touch. Keloids consist of a mass of collagen, a tough fibrous protein, that form Keloid scars are common on the upper trunk of young women. A keloid is an enlarged scar that grows beyond its original boundaries. It can itch, cause pain or be tender to the touch. Keloids consist of a mass of collagen, a tough fibrous protein, that form BIOPHOTO ASSOCIATES—Getty Images/Photo Researchers RM  by [Alice Park](https://time.com/author/alice-park/)  ## Alice Park Senior Correspondent Apr 16, 2015 5:27 PM UTC We all have them — scars that won’t let us forget the spill we took off a bike, the burn we got from a hot stove, or even the legacy of radiation therapy. Scarring is a good thing in some ways — it’s the body’s quick response to a deep injury, its way of protecting and sealing up the wound to keep infections and other noxious agents away. Now scientists led by Dr. Michael Longaker, co-director of the Institute for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at Stanford University, [report in the journal _Science_](http://www.sciencemag.org/lookup/doi/10.1126/science.aab0120) that they have teased apart the molecular steps behind scarring, and also discovered a way to inhibit them from forming. While training to become a plastic surgeon, Longaker operated on fetuses still in the womb and became intrigued by the fact that they did not scar; any incisions surgeons made disappeared practically without a trace. Why, if babies did not change their genes from the womb to the time they are born, do infants form scars? Working with mice, the team focused on two kinds of fibroblasts, which are cells responsible for maintaining the structural integrity of organs, tissues and more. One is primarily responsible for wound healing, and the formation of tumors like melanoma. “This type of fibroblast starts out as less than 1% of the developing skin, but by the time an animal is a month old, it’s 80% of the fibroblasts in skin on the back of the animals,” he says. When he treated the cells with diphtheria toxin, which destroys the fibroblasts, the animals scarred less. It turns out that these fibroblasts carry a marker on their surface that helps scientists to pick them out. And even more fortuitous, there is a drug approved for treating type 2 diabetes that inhibits the work of this marker. In the mice, the drug reduced scarring but did not compromise the integrity of the wounded skin at all, making it a promising potential treatment for scar in people. Each year in the US people get 80 million operations, the bulk of which require incisions that leave a mark, not to mention the millions more who get cuts or scrapes during accidents or who develop fibrous tissue after radiation to treat cancer. If the scar-inhibiting drug is used on those wounds before they begin to heal, says Longaker, it’s possible they won’t leave a scar. Whether the same could be true of existing scars isn’t clear yet. But he says that doctors may be more eager to do revision surgery to minimize scars if such a compound exists. And, if the results are repeated and confirmed, doctors may be able to reduce scars not just for cosmetic purposes but for medical ones as well, such as in the heart after a heart attack, following spinal cord injury and in deep tissues treated with cancer-fighting radiation. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3825046/how-to-get-rid-of-scars/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3825046/how-to-get-rid-of-scars/"},"headline":"The Strange Way a Diabetes Drug May Help Skin Scars","datePublished":"2015-04-16T17:27:54.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-22T06:27:00.354Z","description":"We all form scars, but most of us don’t want them. 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