Aesthetic medicine is dedicated to satisfying the aesthetic goals of patients, while optimising outcomes and minimising adverse events. Soft tissue fillers are now the second most commonly performed minimally-invasive procedure in aesthetic medicine.

Hyaluronic acid (HA) is the most abundant glycosaminoglycan in the human dermis, and it is the injectable biomaterial of choice for this use. Procedures using HA fillers are predicted to increase in frequency by 8–12% per year in North America alone. A primary challenge for manufacturers of soft tissue fillers has been to obtain HA of high quality and purity. HA is currently derived from three sources: the rooster comb of male chickens, the bacterium Streptococcus equi subsp zooepidemicus, and — most recently — the bacterium Bacillus subtilis, first available in 2011.

The B. subtilis-derived HA process allows for a high level of purity and a homogeneous end-product because it does not require the use of powerful organic solvents to extract it from the bacterial capsule, in contrast to the process required for Streptococcus-derived HA. Adverse events are generally injection-related and not serious or systemic. B. subtilis-derived HA is well placed in the market to complement existing sources of HA used in soft tissue fillers.

Read the full peer-reviewed article here.