TECHNOLOGY TO WATCH MASS-PRODUCING NATURE'S SUNSCREEN A breakthrough in genetic engineering could ease the rising risk of skin cancer that results from man-made holes in the ozone layer.
By GENE BYLINSKY

(FORTUNE Magazine) – Scientists expect an ozone hole to open up in the Northern Hemisphere. The big one over Antarctica, discovered in 1985, is still growing. Both threaten life forms from plankton to man in parts of South America, Australia, New Zealand, northern Europe, Canada, and the northeastern tip of the U.S. When chemicals -- refrigerants, for example -- are released into the atmosphere and strip away ozone, ultraviolet rays from the sun pour through the holes. Reports are just in of a 6% to 12% decrease off Antarctica last year in phytoplankton, microscopic drifting plants that whales and other sea creatures feed on. In the past decade skin cancer cases in Australia have doubled, partly because people there are spending more time outdoors and wearing less when they do. Now comes a man-made answer to some of this man-made menace. Through eons of evolution, Homo sapiens has developed a protective skin pigment, melanin, that reflects and absorbs ultraviolet rays. Blacks have the highest concentration of it. As a result, skin cancer is virtually unknown among dark-skinned people in the U.S., Africa, India, and elsewhere. Six years ago that recognition set off a brainstorm in Helen C. Leong, a Silicon Valley physiologist turned venture capitalist. She had just helped form a new bio-technology company, Biosource Genetics Corp., now in Vacaville, California (sales so far in 1992: $3 million). Its scientists had developed what they call geneware, a way to insert into plant cells a gene that orders the cell to turn out a substance it does not normally make. Leong wondered: Why not mass-produce melanin with geneware, and then use the stuff in sunscreens? It protects against the whole spectrum of ultraviolet radiation, which existing chemical sunscreens cannot (see chart). Previously, the only way to collect a supply of melanin was to extract it painstakingly from such exotic sources as cuttlefish. That made the price $95 a gram -- $2,955 an ounce. Now Biosource brews melanin for less than $1 a gram, using fermentation jars like the one in the photograph. Two skin creams and a lipstick incorporating Biosource's synthetic melanin are already available in Europe, made by Lancaster Group of Monaco, a subsidiary of Germany's Benkiser AG. In the U.S., a melanin-based sunscreen is in the final stages of testing for FDA approval and could reach your beach in 18 months or so. It will be marketed as Prozone by Advanced Polymer Systems of Redwood City, California. Now Leong plans to start a new company that would attack the problem in a literally far-out way. She thinks the ozone holes could be plugged by spreading thousands of pounds of fine melanin particles from highflying airplanes every two or three years or so.

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: FORTUNE CHART CAPTION: BLOCKING THREE KINDS OF RAYS

CHART: NOT AVAILABLE CREDIT: FORTUNE DIAGRAM CAPTION: GETTING UNDER YOUR SKIN