Platelet-Derived Exosomes in Aesthetics: Data, Safety, and Real-World Use Cases

Exosomes are having a moment right now, but this is the first time I’ve felt like I was able to sit down and really unpack what matters, the science behind them, the variability in sources, and why not all exosome products are created equal. In our conversation, Alisa Lask, CEO of Rion Aesthetics, helped bring clarity to a field that’s quickly becoming noisy, and I found myself genuinely impressed by the rigor and precision behind the platelet-derived exosomes she describes.

For those of us watching regenerative aesthetics evolve, this discussion offers a grounded, thoughtful look at what’s real, what’s emerging, and what clinicians should be paying attention to. I think you’ll find it as illuminating as I did. ~DrKF

Platelet-derived exosomes are gaining attention in regenerative medicine, and for good reason. In this episode, Alisa Lask, CEO of Rion Aesthetics, explains how discoveries in cardiology and stem-cell research uncovered a specific class of platelet-derived exosomes that signal repair, renewal, and cellular balance, opening new conversations about skin appearance, scalp health, and tissue support.

You’ll learn what these exosomes do at the cellular level, why their source and preparation matter, and how early clinical studies are measuring changes in collagen, redness, and overall skin quality. We also explore practical considerations for clinicians as this fast-moving field grows: evaluating evidence, understanding delivery methods, and knowing what questions to ask when reviewing emerging exosome-based technologies.

In this episode of New Frontiers, learn about:

Kara Fitzgerald:  My conversation with Plated Skin was absolutely inspirational for me. They are really up to some incredible science over in their world and they’re based out of the Mayo Clinic. Their origin story is incredibly interesting to me because this is a regenerative cardiology laboratory and they’re working with heart failure patients and doing stem cell interventions with these heart failure patients. They observed that some individuals respond incredibly well to the therapy, and others less so. In fact, it’s actually a relatively small minority that are up dancing again and just really have an incredible outcome.

Kara Fitzgerald: Many years ago, they took it upon themselves to identify what was going on in these individuals and they ended up isolating that the heavy lifting was done by exosomes. But wait, there’s more, of course, not just a standard exosome, but these regenerative, this specific class of exosomes that are involved in sort of the rebuild. They’re not pro-inflammatory— You know, there’s good guys and there’s bad guys, of course, and there’s probably exosomes in the middle— but these are really pure regenerative exosomes and this subcategory of individuals just had a robust amount and that was doing the heavy lift. They were able to isolate these, they were able to produce them reliably in the laboratory setting, and they have gone on to have, I guess, at least 30 INDs with the FDA for different interventions.

Kara Fitzgerald: And they’ve also got Plated Skin, where we’re talking today about topical application. I also talked with Alisa about the other ways that they’re working on using this particular exosome. And they come from platelets, by the way, and we’ll talk about why that’s really super interesting as well.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald:  Hi, everybody. Welcome to New Frontiers in Functional Medicine, where we are interviewing the best minds in functional medicine. And of course, today is no exception. Today I am joined by Alisa Lask. She is the CEO of Rion Aesthetics and she’s helping lead a new wave in regenerative aesthetics using platelet-derived exosomes in areas like hair growth and skin rejuvenation. Under her leadership, Rion has launched Plated Skin Science, a medical-grade exosome skincare line now available through aesthetic providers.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Alisa, it’s great to have you here. I’m thrilled to pick your brain on all things Plated Skin and all things exosomes. Let’s get into the journey of Plated Skin, and maybe even before that. There’s Mayo Clinic founders who started working with exosomes. I mean, just tell us the journey and then how it ends up with Plated Skin as one arm of the work.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, it’s quite a story, actually. Our two founders are cardiologists that are internationally recognized in regenerative medicine and they were working for 15 years in the Van Cleve Cardiac Regenerative Medicine Program labs at Mayo in Rochester, Minnesota and they were stem cell guys, right? They were studying stem cells. And the one thing they couldn’t figure out was, why is it that only five to ten percent of the people walk across the stage where you’re like, oh my gosh, incredible results? So they really started studying these people who had the incredible results and what they were realizing is they had a very high level of exosomes. And so they’re like, okay, this may be a bit of a discovery. It’s not the stem cell, it’s this thing called exosomes that’s probably making these patients walk across the stage.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: What was the research that they were doing specifically using stem cells? Was it in heart failure patients? What was it?

Alisa Lask: Yeah, cardiac trials. And so then they retrospectively looked at these patients that had done extremely well. And they had all the samples because Mayo Clinic is known for doing it once and double checking it twice. So they made this discovery and then they said, okay, we know it’s these regenerative exosomes, but these are hard to get. How do we find a way that doesn’t require one or two donors, or all these lab manipulations and taking cells outside the body, which is not good. And so that’s how they made this discovery on these platelet-derived exosomes. And it’s like a trash to treasure, right? We used to think exosomes were just trash, and what you’ve seen, not just from these guys, but I mean, there’s hundreds of publications now, is that the exosomes really are the key to this regeneration.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Can you just define what exosomes are, and how they work, and what they do for the hair and skin? I’m throwing out a lot of questions to you. You apply these topically, so they’re absorbed into the dermal tissue. It’s fascinating to me. So talk to me about what they are and how they work in hair and skin.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, so in your body, exosomes are like messaging to your cells. So think about it like text messages, right? And you have thousands of exosomes in your body that send all kinds of different signals. There’s one in particular that’s this repair, renew, regenerate signal and that’s kind of what we were able to isolate from these platelet-derived exosomes. In terms of applying it topically and do they penetrate, they absolutely are penetrating the skin. We saw that they’re penetrating to the reticular dermis on our electron microscopy, which is fantastic. And that’s what you’re looking for, because unlike a growth factor that sits outside the cell and just gets one signal again and again, it doesn’t ever turn off, the exosome actually goes into the cell and then it leaves. So it’s very polite. It sends its message and then it’s gone.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s fascinating. So it goes to the reticular dermis through topical application and can act intracellularly.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, so it’s probably penetrating through the hair follicle. I think there’s a bunch of different hypotheses on that, but that’s probably one of the main methods. And this is what we’re looking for, this anti-aging at a cellular level.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So let me just make sure I’m understanding this. They’re doing these stem cell interventions in heart failure patients and they’re using autologous stem cells and some of the individuals were just responding remarkably well. So they set out on this hunt to discover–

Alisa Lask: Yeah, they looked back. And then they had all the samples still and so they went back to discover, retrospectively, why. And this was hundreds of patients. I think it was 560 patients in this sample and so that’s what they really decided, was that it wasn’t just these stem cells. And again, they spent their whole career doing a stem cells so for them to suddenly realize it’s not stem cells, it’s these exosomes. And you have thousands of exosomes, so they were looking for the one that was signaling regeneration: Healing, renewing, that sort of thing.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So that sent them on another hunt, because there’s good guy exosomes, I’m assuming, and there’s probably exosomes that are more packed with inflammatory mediators. So did they have to characterize the contents of lots of exosomes?

Alisa Lask: Absolutely. Yeah. So there’s all kinds of things they do. Western blot is the most common, but there’s markers that show it’s an exosome CD9, CD67, or 63, that are really showing that this is a regenerative exosome, and then there’s other markers that show it’s a platelet exosome. So yeah, there’s all kinds of super deep work that goes into this. And then I think along the way, what was so interesting is, they were studying heart failure patients and coming up with these platelet-derived exosomes, this proprietary technology, and they were in the labs. When you wear gloves all the time your skin gets irritated and it gets kind of angry. And they were putting this, we’ll call it platelet extract, but these platelet-derived exosomes on their hands and they were starting to notice, oh my, the skin is looking better! And, we don’t think about it, and of course these cardiac guys don’t think about it either, but skin is your largest organ, right?

Alisa Lask: So we think about longevity and all these thing, and you should be thinking about your largest organ. And so they started thinking, well, gosh, maybe we should do some research and study and see what could happen with skin and using this topically while they’re still pursuing all these incredible noble causes. And so that was kind of the initial part.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s cool. It’s just so random. They’re like, we’ve got this interesting solution that we’re isolating, let’s throw some on our hands. It’s gotta be safe.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, exactly. Typical scientist. “I’m sure it’s fine, right?” Mayo Clinic also has another spin-off, Vanicream, and so they kind of talked to some of the Vanicream people and formulators at the time, and just really started going into, okay, what do we need to do and how do we change the course of skincare?

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Interesting. Remind me of what Vanicream is.

Alisa Lask: Vanicream is a topical along the lines of CeraVe or Cetaphil, not a lot of ingredients, for sensitive skin, that sort of thing. So basically, this discovery was then pulled out of the employee entrepreneur program and a company named Rion was formed and it was formed really for looking at platelet-derived exosomes for therapeutic uses. And I was doing some consulting for them, because my career, aside from doing aesthetics and all these fun things I’ve done the past few years, I spent time doing neuroscience, orthopedics, all of these other more therapeutic things. And so I was working with them and they’re like, I don’t know what we’re going to do with this skincare. Maybe we’ll sell it at Sephora online or something. And I was like, “No, wait a minute. This is too good to stay in the lab. It’s like true biotech meets beauty, right?

Alisa Lask: It’s something we all talk about. It’s always promise but no proof and they had something that we could study and grow and so we set into this big clinical trial at Mayo Clinic to really see if this was worth it. Because we weren’t going to put our name on it or bring it to market if it didn’t have true clinical data.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Awesome. Let me just ask you a question and we’ll spend some time on the data. I just want to go back to confirm, with these platelet-derived exosomes, they were able to determine that these guys were in fact the most regenerative of the exosome explorations that they did. The platelet-derived seem to be the heavy-lifter exosomes in these heart failure patients.

Alisa Lask: So there are other ways to get regenerative exosomes besides platelets. But what’s important to understand about exosomes is that you need to have a certain decibel level. You can’t just sprinkle a little. It can’t be like one and done. It’s probably multiple treatments and so it becomes exorbitantly expensive. So what they realized was that they were able to condition these platelets to produce these regenerative exosomes in a very cost-effective manner. Because you can get inflammatory exosomes from platelets as well, so there’s a very special way that you need to do it to get these particular renewing–

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: To get the good ones. Wow, that’s so interesting. I mean, it really makes sense. The lowly platelet isn’t just for forming a clot and turning off the blood flow. It’s got a lot of information in there to dictate what’s going to happen where that clot starts. That’s so fascinating. And it’s really a part of the healing journey. No great surprise that you could have those juicy regenerative exosomes there as well. How cool that they isolated that and then figured out how to make them. That’s a really interesting story.

Alisa Lask: Yeah. When you slice your hand, your first responders are platelets, right? So they have a unique ability to renew, especially the skin.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And your first responders need to be able to be pro-inflammatory to fight any infection, any local bugs, but eventually it has to repair and regenerate, create new skin, all of that.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, exactly.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: It does make sense that there is a little switch process that goes on. I’m a huge fan of specialized pro-resolving lipid mediators, which participate in the switch from the pro-inflammatory to the resolution. Sorry to just completely randomly geek out on you, but this seems like it’s part of that story and it’s really interesting. But the other piece, of course, staying in the science conversation is, I love skincare. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t. I have loved forever to slather on… Initially I would just focus on stuff that was clean, just reading labels, or felt good, because there was just no science, as you said. Just like no science. The cosmetics industry has not been held to task, so the fact that you and your team had the commitment is just ridiculously important. And we need to be disruptive in this space, so talk about that. You have this discovery and you decide to put the clinical research behind it. And what do you do then?

Alisa Lask: Yeah, I have a career in pharmaceuticals and biologics and I’m a big believer in data and peer-reviewed publications. When I entered this industry and they wanted me to come talk to them, I was like, I’m not going to this exosome. This is a bunch of charlatans, right? I said, “No way, I’m not interested.” And this lovely dermatologist in Palm Beach was like, no, Alisa, you really should meet these people at Mayo Clinic. I grew up in the Midwest and he’s like, they’re your kind of people. And I said, oh, but like there’s so much nonsense going on. He’s like, I think they’re trying to do it right.

Alisa Lask: And so I went up there and I was just incredibly impressed. They were authentic, not worried about– You know, I’ve been in business for a while and everybody was worried about how much money you’re going to make. They were just out to figure out how do we truly change regenerative medicine and how do we help people? I mean, just all the things you go into healthcare for. It was just so refreshing and I just thought, I could bring my business skills and we kind of talked and I founded Rion Aesthetics and I licensed the technology for Plated, and here we are today, a few years later.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So, Rion Aesthetics is from the Mayo discoverers and then Plated is, specifically, the topical exosome offering. Is that right?

Alisa Lask: Rion is the parent company that was doing the original work and they’re working on the therapeutic. What Rion Aesthetics licensed was the technology. Think about it as earlier technology, right? Because they had to do all these additional things to get an FDA-grade exosome technology. And so we licensed that human platelet extract, which is our ingredient in our platelet-derived exosomes for the cosmetic formulation. So it’s a topical cosmetic formulation and we’ve been out for four years in January.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s very exciting. All right, let’s talk a little bit about the studies that you have been working on with this particular product.

Alisa Lask: So studies have been really important before we put the Plated name on it. Our initial study was done at Mayo Clinic and it was using our product, Intense, which is our hero SKU, so it’s the highest concentration of exosomes. We used it twice daily in 56 patients. And then we also had them apply it on each arm in their underarm and we biopsied that area. So we not only got data from photos and scales, blinded investigators, but we also got data from the punch biopsies. I think we had three peer-reviewed publications that came out of just that one study and then we followed with, now we have, I think, over 10 publications and we’re working on a few more. So we followed with several other studies that we can talk about, but that was really our pivotal study that showed us that we had something. And then I think we evolved from there to say, okay, what other areas, like post-procedure, you know, what other things should we be measuring and looking at? So that was our start.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Can you give me some high level key findings in that original study and what you found applying to the different areas and what you found with the punch biopsies?

Alisa Lask: Yeah, so we’ll just start kind of with the high level. I think the biggest thing that we saw was this visible appearance in all the characteristics we want for anti-aging. So, the appearance of wrinkles, redness, luminosity, brown spot reduction. We had statistical significance in many of those at six weeks, and the study went out for 12 weeks. So, we have blinded evaluators that were showing that we had an improvement in each of those areas.

Alisa Lask: And then we had patient-reported outcomes as well. We had a lot of great stories of patients. One lady had a lot of redness and there was a great story there about how she kind of had her head down and now she felt like she could walk proud because she had this visible reduction in redness. So then if we sort of transition to the punch biopsies, that’s where we looked at things like collagen and elastin. What are the exosomes actually doing? What’s happening at the cellular level, which is what we’re all interested in now? And we found profound changes in the collagen. Even an 80-year-old had 75% improvement in collagen. You know, my mom’s like, “I’m too old, it’s too late.” And I think that study got me really excited that it’s not too late.

Alisa Lask: Obviously the more photodamage that you had, the better the results we saw. So it wasn’t necessarily that if you’re 45, you’re going to have this, or 60 you’re going to have this, because if you have Irish skin and you’re outside, and you don’t wear sunscreen, it’s going to be different than someone that’s a lot more careful, wears a hat, stays out of the sun. And we’re just publishing another study where we’re going to show, again, about 50% improvement in collagen. We showed improvement in elastin. Really, these are all the things that you’re looking for to build that structure for what we talked about earlier, which is your biggest organ, which is your skin.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So cool. That’s really cool. I’m so glad that you brought some nice hard science to it and not just, you know, “In six weeks I noticed I looked better.” Which obviously, we want to know that. We do, but just bringing bringing the underlying evidence and diving into a little bit of what happened mechanistically with collagen synthesis and elastin. That’s very, very, very cool. And I know there’s two different products. This is applying the Intense?

Alisa Lask: Yeah, so was using our Intense, twice daily. What I love about this is it’s kind of smart technology, right? It’s true biotech meets beauty, and so depending on what your needs are, the technology is going to address those areas, which is really cool. And that’s what we’ve seen in the trials.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: What was the duration of this first study?

Alisa Lask: It was a 12-week study. Most of our studies are 12 weeks. We do early endpoints at six. I mean, we’re looking and patients are coming in, taking photos and doing things like that. But you know, with skincare, it’s really important for people understand this. You are not going to see a result in two to three days. If you do, something’s wrong, right? Because it takes time for all those things underneath the structure to actually show up on the surface. And so I just tell people six weeks. That’s probably the earliest you should be looking to say, am I seeing improvement?

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: What might we see respond first? I’m just thinking about UV damage, redness, et cetera, versus wrinkles. I mean, is there kind of a continuum of what we might see shift first?

Alisa Lask: What we’ve seen in our trials was usually the appearance of redness is first, if you have that. I mean, if you think about it, exosomes are very anti-inflammatory, so they’re high antioxidant. And usually what we see is luminosity. And that’s obviously hard to pinpoint, but when you look at the photos, you just go, wow, they look better. Their skin looks better, you know, it just glows. And then I think after that, it takes a lot longer when you want to see wrinkles and sort of that texture of your skin and brown spots. Brown spots are the hardest. They take a lot more time, but I would say the first two we hear consistently in the trials are luminosity and redness.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I think that’s good to know, just that we need to tuck in for the long haul. But at six weeks you’ve reported changes so it’s not like we’re talking an incredibly long time for things that have been happening to the face. Our skin is the largest organ and it interfaces with our environment. It’s like always being exposed to an environment. So six weeks is not a big ask.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So we talk about applying the product, and I think we start twice daily and maybe we continue there, but what are the other tips and tricks for using it for getting the most out of this exosome product?

Alisa Lask: One of our big hacks that we’ve sort of discovered recently is that if you really want to enhance the exosome result, you have to make sure that your face is prepared. And exosomes only like certain pHs. They don’t like most of the ingredients that are in your skin [care products], makeup removers, your sunscreens and things like that. So the most important thing when using Plated Skin Science is it has to go on clean skin. And then you need to wait five minutes until it has time to absorb before you slather on your sunscreen or your makeup. It goes fast, it’s easy to layer, but it’s absolutely critical to the success, because most of those ingredients would destroy the exosomes.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Interesting. It will really destroy them. So your product is like leaving probiotics out of the fridge or something. It’s just gone

Alisa Lask: Yeah, it has a lipid bilayer and so a lot of those things kind of break that. And then all the contents inside are what you really need and those are released and no longer good.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: How do you clean your face? I mean, could you use a product that wouldn’t be favorable to their working?

Alisa Lask: Yeah. I mean, obviously we all do now, right? Because that’s what’s out there. I was using Neutrogena wipes and they have oil in them. Oil is not an ingredient that exosomes like. So you just have to rinse your face off and dry it to make sure whatever soap or mask or whatever you’re using— And definitely don’t use toner and then put it on. Just a clean face, use your toner at a different time, and let it dry for five minutes. That’s the key.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So just rinse it off with water, pat your face dry, then chill out for a little while and then apply it.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, brush your teeth, whatever you need to do before you go to bed. It goes a lot faster than you think and it’s just so easy to layer, but no one wants to spend all this money on something and then realize that their routine is destroying it, right? That would be bad.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Rinse your face with water, brush your teeth. I like it. It’s easy. I could definitely build that into a good working habit. Okay, thanks. Very important tip.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I’m sure a question in many peoples’ minds now is, what about post-microneedling, or you know, I did a few rounds of Morpheus8 [microneedling technology] because I’ve just sustained some skin damage being here in Mexico. Is Plated indicated?

Alisa Lask: Yeah. So we asked ourselves the same question after the first study and so we then went on to study post-ablative laser. We have a product that’s specifically formulated for post-procedure called Calm. And what we saw in that study, which was also published in a peer-reviewed journal, was that your downtime— so your return to looking like you want to go out and go to social events and all those things— was greatly reduced. So that recovery time, whether it’s your redness, whether it’s all of the inflammation across your face as your body’s trying to heal from the ablative laser, or whatever you had done.

Alisa Lask: And then we just recently did another study post-laser. I think the key thing we learned, this is my little hack, is that it’s really important to pre-treat. So it’s like, if you pre-treat for a couple of weeks with Plated Intense or Plated Calm, it doesn’t matter, you’re revving up the fibroblasts so they’re actually more able have you have a better outcome at the end of the, whether it’s laser, microneedling, whatever that may be. But I will say, a lot of companies talk about microneedling in. We don’t do that. We don’t believe that it needs to be microneedled in. I actually wonder if it damages them. I don’t know, but I think it’s better if you’re going to get microneedled, to separate it out. It’s not going to matter whether you do it an hour after, the next day. If you’ve pre-treated your skin for a couple of weeks with platelet-derived exosomes and then when your skin is ready— But this is a water-based product, so if you are doing microneedling, you want to wait until you can put water on your skin because the pH and things like that. So we always are very careful when we talk to our providers about this.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Interesting. Yeah, and then you’ve demonstrated that it’s absorbed deeply. Very cool. Now, you’ve already touched on exosomes being very different. They’re not all created equal. And I think you’ve already walked us through why the regenerative platelet-derived are so special. What about other exosome products out there? I mean, people are talking about plant exosomes. I mean, you can make a few comments on that, but just more broadly, the exosome products on the market.

Alisa Lask: I will say, exosomes has become a huge buzzword and I think that’s what I told you in the beginning. I didn’t want to join the industry because it was a lot of just nonsense. So plant-derived exosomes, plant exosomes cannot communicate with human exosomes. There is zero published data on that. Zero. Now, could you get nutrients from a plant exosome? Sure. Like eating a carrot? Same, right? So it’s really more like a plant extract. I they’re using now exosome in place of extract.

Alisa Lask: So it’s not going to do any harm, but it’s not the same “biotech meets beauty” of a human platelet exosome, right? Because that’s human-derived ingredient. And then I think there’s a lot of other sources. So people talk about MSCs (mesenchymal stem cell), umbilical cord, people talk about young people, old people. I think what we realized was when you use, let’s say, MSCs, use umbilical cords, again, you’re taking those outside the body. Right? They don’t exactly love that. And then you’re manipulating them again and again in the lab and what you find is you can get this phenotypic deviation. What we love about the platelets is we are conditioning them naturally and so we’re able to produce pentillions, which is lots. And we don’t have to do any cell cultures or do anything like that, that you would use using MSC’s or umbilical cords or anything like that.

Alisa Lask: And then the other fascinating thing I get asked all the time is, gosh, why aren’t you using 18-year-olds or these super athletes? And we’ve done all kinds of research, and this is the benefit of being a part of a bigger company that’s working on heart attacks and diabetic foot ulcers and all that. We’re able to learn from all they’re doing and apply it to our business. But what we found is that platelet donors really need to be 18 to maybe 45, because if you’re too young, you’re not conditioned to produce these regenerative exosomes in the level that we would want them for the products that we’re using. And so we’re continuing to learn, but it’s not as cookie cutter as people might make it out.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So you source platelets from donor centers and then you’re able to multiply them, proliferate.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, so we purchase them right before they have to be thrown away. So these FDA compliant banks would have to pay to throw away this biologic material. We are instead giving them something, which is like, think about what that does for the whole system. We’re paying them. And then it’s frozen. And so these are already screened, right? These are transfusion-grade platelets. They have been screened lots. Then we take them to Rochester, Minnesota to our manufacturing facility and we have six more quality checks, which is five more than most cosmetic companies have. So again, we’re almost running like a biotech company in beauty because we’re taking all this learning and we’re applying it here. And most of the other companies that are trying to enter this space just don’t have this knowledge base that we have from doing all of these other things.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Very interesting. Let’s talk about hair. You have some interesting research using it in this space.

Alisa Lask: We do. We started in skin and then you get a lot of requests, because hair is a big deal, right? It’s not just men, it’s women, like postmenopausal, perimenopausal, postpartum. When women lose hair it’s so stressful and, you know, some of the big paths are just oxidative stress. Follicles hate stress. And what we were noticing was, on the face, when we talked about that appearance of redness, and so we’re like, let’s do a study with hair. So we used Dr. Rod Rohrich, who’s an internationally recognized, plastic surgeon, huge researcher in Dallas, Texas and we did a double-blinded, placebo-controlled, randomized study. We looked at a bunch of metrics, but we had statistical significance on several, which were hair density, hair thickness, and the appearance of fullness.

Alisa Lask: And then what was really interesting was, on zoomed-in photos of the scalp there was a difference in this appearance of redness. That to me was a profound difference. You know, we never realized what our scalp looks like up close, but we were able to take these pictures using Canfield technology, which is widely used in most of the aesthetic trials. And they have this hair metrics and we were tattooing, so we knew we were taking them in the exact same spots. I think that was really what was interesting. I think that just basically, we’re creating a better environment so your hair can stay in the anagen phase a bit longer. And then scalp health, super important as well for hair health.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Really interesting. So basically you treated the scalp as you treat the skin, which then in turn allowed the hair to just grow better.

Alisa Lask: Yeah. And it was a different product. So we have a few other ingredients, but obviously the hero is our platelet-derived exosomes. But we wanted to make sure it was pH balanced for women that dyed their hair and that it wasn’t going to be greasy, because I don’t want to put it on my hair and then have greasy hair all day. So you can literally put it on your hair and then as soon as it dries—

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: How do you apply it?

Alisa Lask: It’s in a glass dropper. And again, this is my tip for the hair: Everyone wants to overdo it, like dump the stuff, but you don’t need to do that. It’s just tiny– There’s one dropper a day and you can do little droplets in the areas and then just gently spread it You don’t need to saturate your scalp. It’s just that constant message day after day that’s important. We talked about skin taking six weeks, but I think with hair you’ve got to be patient. This is a four- to six-month thing. You can’t be going 30 days—

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Just tuck in, yeah.

Alisa Lask: Yeah. You’ve got to stick with it. And hair is multimodality, so when you talk to most of your providers, they’re going to tell you it’s not just one thing or another. But we believe this is a solution that wasn’t out there before for people that are maybe taking over-the-counter, or they’re getting some sort of prescription, or things like that.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: It’s just topical and you rub it in, no microneedling, no tool to distribute it.

Alisa Lask: No. Our study was double-blind, placebo-controlled, and they just dropped it on the areas. And like I said, we tattooed so we knew where we were applying and where we were measuring so we had the same places to measure. And listen, PRS (Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery) is a very difficult plastic surgery journal to get published in. So the fact that we are accepted was phenomenal.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: And what was the duration of that trial?

Alisa Lask: We ran it for six months. If I did it again, I think I might even run nine, just because I’d like to see. The study was a crossover so we had patients that were in the control group, so unfortunately they were getting placebo, and we were able to track them with photos. And my favorite photo of the whole trial is someone that was on placebo and then they crossed over. So in clinical trial terms, that means now you’re done with the placebo and you get to take the study product. And then we had another photo of him three months later and his hair just looked incredibly different. So he obviously had a great result and was just so thrilled to be in the arm of the trial that was giving the Plated Hair Serum.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: I was looking through some of your results as well and they were pretty exciting. I mean, the redness is obvious on a lot of the before and after photos but it was interesting to me that it looked like the face is possibly fuller. Anything you might be able to say to that, especially as we’re in this era of “Ozempic face”. Anything that you tracked in studies in that arena?

Alisa Lask: We didn’t measure facial fullness, but if you think about it, with your collagen and your elastin, you’re building that underlying infrastructure, which is supporting things. But that isn’t something that was measured in any of our trials.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Okay. I mean, it seems we can’t replace fat. Or at least this intervention, it sounds like, isn’t going to put fat in your face, but the collagen, the elastin… Very cool.

Alisa Lask: Yeah. And we’re seeing a lot of patients are coming in that have been on GLP-1s and they’re just frustrated, especially with hair loss. I’ll tell you the biggest thing I’ve seen with GLP-1s is hair loss. And that’s been for a lot of our patients.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Now, duration of use. We want to go twice a day, it sounds like, if we’re really working on correcting something. Twice a day, and your initial study that really got some incredible results, both biopsy-proven results and visual results, was a 12-week duration, twice a day of the Intense. And then you recommend people go to once a day. Is this just tuck in and use it forever? Do you break on it? Or you have another, gentler product one could transition to. Or any other tips and tricks on using it or prescribing it to our patients?

Alisa Lask: Yeah, I mean, obviously everyone asks, when can I stop? But the thing is, every day you go out, you’re getting oxidative stress and you’re continuing to age. So if you want homeostasis, you’ve got to keep going.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: You’ve got to keep using it.

Alisa Lask: You got to keep using it. I mean, if you stop using it one day and you drop off, you’re not going to see some kind of— But I think as you age over time, you have more of those stressors outside and you’re going to see the results. And, I think our goal is to reduce those visible signs of aging at a cellular level.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: So once daily is sufficient in your opinion?

Alisa Lask: Yeah. And again, I think this is where you need to talk to your provider. That’s why we’re sold in the professional channel, not on Amazon. This is very dependent on, like we talked about, the sun exposure, like all the things.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: What’s going on.

Alisa Lask: I ride horses, so I’m the sun all the time and so I still use Intense, but some patients do transition to Daily, which is a lesser penetration. It’s a little more cost effective and it’s a little thicker. So a lot of patients like that when they’re, let’s say up north in the winter and it’s dry. I live in Florida, so I like something that dries very quickly here, because it’s just so humid, probably much like where you are.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah, right, right. I know you’ve used the VISIA-CR measure. It’s a photo tool to identify changes. I don’t even know if I’m saying it right. The Visia?

Alisa Lask: Yeah, that’s the Canfield Visia that we talked about.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That is really cool to me. There are some spas or some dermatology offices that people might have access to it. That would be fun for me, as someone in the science geeky space, to start with my baseline Visia and then do a follow up perhaps in a few months.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, it’s an awesome tool and Canfield technology is used in most of these aesthetic studies that are doing high-level, good science because you have a baseline. You know, we’re very subjective, you know, “Oh, you look better but you have make up on and you’ve done your hair differently.” And these tools are really important in bringing good science to beauty, right? We haven’t always had that and so I love using that kind of technology. And I think now with AI, it’s going to get even better. I think there’s going to be more tools that are going to be coming out that’ll allow us to customize, that’ll allow us to really interact and understand what things we should be putting on our skin every day.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yes, I 100% agree with you. I think that technology is very cool and I’m thrilled that it’s being used so broadly and that you have it, you hold it in high regard. Okay, so I know that you may not be able to speak to this specifically, but I’m curious if you’ve had any anecdotal reports around skin condition changes. So maybe somebody using this who’s had a really refractory dermatitis or somebody with psoriasis has tried it. I mean, can you give me any anecdotal ideas? I mean, it seems logical to me that this could be a therapeutic intervention in some challenging skin conditions.

Alisa Lask: Yeah, and I think it’s an interesting hypothesis. It’s something we need to study. I think that’s something that’s really important to us as a company. And so we are starting again at the pharmaceutical side, studies early stage, FDA investigational studies with atopic dermatitis. It’s for a different product. So this is not Plated Skin Science, which is a cosmetic, it’s a different product. But again, this is very early stage. It’’s going to take several years to go through the FDA but I think, yeah, there’s a lot of interesting things. I think we’re going to look back in three to five years and you’re going to be like, oh my gosh, we talked about exosomes and now you’re seeing products getting approved and things like that. I think regenerative medicine is the future and I think exosomes are going to be a big part of it. And I think there’s going to be a lot of things that we’re going to see, hopefully on the therapeutic side, that we can do the studies and have the proper indications.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Any other studies that you’re working on that you can share? Any other FDA paths you’re following using these specific platelet-derived exosomes?

Alisa Lask: Yeah. At Rion Aesthetics we are also working on some early stage FDA investigational studies using, again, a purified exosome product, so not Plated. And we’re looking at skin boosters, sort of the idea of an injectable, true regenerative medicine. I’ve worked on products like Juvederm and Restylane. These are dermal fillers with hyaluronic acid and they’re great products, right? Fantastic. But I think what we’re seeing is that the market really wants true regenerative medicine in aesthetics and so we’re looking at that. We’re also looking at could an injectable, this purified exosome product, work for hair loss? So again, very early stage.

Alisa Lask: And then on the medical side, there’s a company called Rion and the website is RionTX. And that is our parent company that’s doing all of the medical grades, so diabetic foot ulcers, heart attack, orthopedic indications like knee osteoarthritis. I they’re in phase one, but they’ve got around 30 INDs with the FDA. So this is happening, right? They’re doing studies on the therapeutic side. And then we’re just launching another company within the family called Rion Vet, as an animal lover. So we’ll have equine and canine platelet-derived exosomes. So if your dog had hip dysplasia or some other things like that, we’re hoping this could be a solution.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Wow, that’s so exciting. Oh my goodness. So different products, different concentrations, different delivery vehicles, all of this. You can use them as injectables.

Alisa Lask: Yeah. Of course, the canine will come from canine donors, the equine from equine donors, and then obviously the diabetic foot ulcers mixed with knee injections or something else. So think about it as a platform technology and then personalized for each of these areas and then studied to see if we can obtain some sort of an FDA indication in those areas.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: That’s very cool. What will launch first? What’s closing in on the finish line?

Alisa Lask: For Rion, the medical side, that’s sort of our parent company, they’re the furthest along on the diabetic foot ulcer. Those are past the phase two trial and phase three is pivotal. And then I think we’ve announced in several press releases that we have partnerships with the Department of Defense. They’re looking at a lot of uses for these exosomes with our soldiers, our veterans, so it’s a great partnership there. And then I think we’ve got all kinds of other exploratory ideas that are early stage.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: You know, usually I say a few times through the course of the podcast that we’ll link to the papers, we’ll link to your website, we’ll link to the parent company website. We’ll just gather all these up. But I’ve been really riveted by the story. So I just want to let everybody know that, indeed, just circle over to the show notes and you can access all of what we’ve been talking about, and of course, how you can bring the product into your practice. Anything else that we missed that you want to talk about, Alisa? This has been so interesting.

Alisa Lask: I think it’s just important to not get caught up in this word exosome because everyone is slapping it on a label, and really look at the science. Your listeners love the science, right? Ask ChatGPT or Grok, “Who has peer-reviewed publications?” And the other critical thing is there is no FDA approval for any product to inject exosomes. So I drive by all these clinics now saying they inject exosomes, this and that. There’s no approval. So I think, do your homework and make sure you understand because this is complicated and they’re human-derived ingredients and you want to be sure they’re virus-free, they have the right exosomes, and it is very sophisticated. And I think that’s just the most important thing to understand.

Dr. Kara Fitzgerald: Yeah, it’s big. It’s the wild west, I think, with stem cells and even more so with exosomes. Indeed, it’s the wild west. I think bringing some very good, solid peer-reviewed, top-tier journal science to it is fabulous and I thank you guys for stepping up to the plate. And gosh, it just sounds like such a cool journey over there at Mayo with the original founders and their work in regenerative cardiology, so hats off to them as well. Thank you so much for joining me today. Really interesting.

Alisa Lask: Thank you so much for having me.

Alisa Lask is the CEO of Rion Aesthetics, where she is advancing regenerative aesthetics through the development of platelet-derived exosomes and early investigational work in hair restoration and skin applications. She also oversees (plated)™ Skin Science, a medical-grade exosome skincare line distributed through aesthetic professionals.

Alisa brings extensive experience from senior leadership roles at Galderma, Allergan, Zimmer-Biomet, and Eli Lilly. She holds an MBA from the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and serves on the Board of Directors at CollPlant, a regenerative aesthetics and medicine company.

Alisa Lask

Plated Skin Science

Rion Aesthetics

Van Cleve Cardiac Regenerative Medicine Program

Rod J. Rohrich, MD

Press Release: RION Announces Final Patient Enrolled in the Phase 2 Clinical Study for Purified Exosome Product™ (PEP™) in Diabetic Foot Ulcers

Publications from Plated Skin Science

Research

Exosomes: The Latest in Regenerative Aesthetics

Effect of Topical Human Platelet Extract (HPE) for Facial Skin Rejuvenation: A Histological Study of Collagen and Elastin

Effect of Topical Platelet Extract for Post-Procedural Skin Recovery with Fractional Carbon Dioxide Skin Laser Resurfacing

Safety and efficacy of human platelet extract in skin recovery after fractional CO2 laser resurfacing of the face: A randomized, controlled, evaluator-blinded pilot study

Human Platelet Extract (Plated) Hair Serum for Hair Health Improvement: A Double-blind, Placebo-controlled Clinical Study

Efficacy and Tolerability of Topical Platelet Exosomes for Skin Rejuvenation: Six-Week Results – June 2022

Topical Platelet Exosomes Reduce Senescence Signaling in Human Skin: An Exploratory Prospective Trial – November 2024

Podcast: From Hot Flashes to Healthspan: The FxMed Guide to Hormones & Longevity

Podcast: Reversing Aging: Screening, Wearables & What To Do Now

Podcast: Why Centenarians Are Defying Science: Secrets to Living 100+

Blog: ​​The FxMed Moments That “Broke the Internet” in 2025

Recipe: Tart-Sweet Cranberry & Beet Longevity Sauce

Bio Age Self Assessment Quiz

Younger You book

Better Broths and Healing Tonics book