Split is very well known for its historical palace and its beautiful Riva, and its economy is mostly centered around tourism. But tourism itself is evolving as more and more people are coming to Croatia to benefit from its very competitive pricing and high-quality medicine, particularly dentistry and aesthetic medicine.
Dr. François-Xavier Pellay
Ronny Haesen
Last year, in the middle of the Covid crisis, a new biotech startup was created to broaden even more this new wave of medical tourism. Cell Culture Lab d.o.o. (CCL), a company co-founded by a French scientist, Dr. François-Xavier Pellay, and Belgian businessman, Ronny Haesen, is now working with local clinics to provide anti-aging therapies at the top of what science has to offer today.
The company is based on the original research of Dr. Pellay, who is an expert in aging biology and particularly in anti-aging and rejuvenation medicine. His research, mostly done in Croatia, has led to the discovery of ways to rejuvenate human cells. Such research is to be applied in aesthetic medicine for skin rejuvenation and long-term anti-wrinkle treatment.
As we are all well aware, skin quality decreases with age, with the most obvious sign being the apparition of wrinkles and the loss of skin elasticity. These signs of skin aging are mostly due to the loss of fibroblasts, the main cells of the dermis, which are like skin factories for the production of collagen, elastin, and hyaluronic acid.
Shutterstock / Cell Culture Lab
Dr. Pellay’s skin rejuvenation treatment is based on the possibility to reinject your own rejuvenated fibroblasts to replace the ones lost with age. This kind of anti-aging therapy for the skin is quite different from the usual fillers and mesotherapy available today. Botox and Hyaluronic acid treatment, which are the most popular and most efficient ways to reduce wrinkles almost instantly, have the main disadvantage that they only last for a few months, in the case of botox, and are not free of possible side-effects. Most importantly, they don’t make the skin younger; they make it look younger.
Shutterstock / Cell Culture Lab
On the other hand, this biotechnological approach for skin rejuvenation is completely natural since it uses people’s own cells and is based on bringing the skin back to where it was 10 to 15 years ago.
A year after its creation, this Split based company is now on the verge of becoming a multi-national company with developments in the USA, UAE, Singapore, Hong Kong, and Japan.
CCL is also actively working on the next step of what could be brought by their cellular rejuvenation technology. The possibilities are enormous, but their next product will probably be stem cells, in particular mesenchymal stem cells, for which a lot of applications are already on the market for regenerative medicine. Rejuvenating these cells before using them could have tremendous potential and bring us one step closer to the fountain of youth.
More info can be found on their website www.cellculturelab.eu
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