Can Glycation Be Reversed? What a 2026 Study on Skin AGEs Showed

I'm Dr. Hongseok Kim, a board-certified dermatologist with 21 years of practice and the medical director of VOS Dermatology Clinic in Gangnam, Seoul, right in front of Dosan Park. At VOS I see every patient myself, from the first consultation to the last treatment.

Can glycation be reversed once it has settled into your collagen? For a long time my answer was "not really, so focus on making less of it." A paper published in 2026 changed that answer in one narrow but remarkable way, and when I read it I could hardly believe it. This page is based on my YouTube video from September 2026; I rewrote it for readers abroad. The video above can be watched with translated captions.

Why was glycation considered irreversible?

Short answer: early sugar-protein bonds are weak, but over time they settle into stable compounds, AGEs, on collagen that stays in the skin for a very long time.

Glucose is always in the blood, and it can react naturally with the body's proteins, including the collagen that fills the dermis (in the video at 00:57). I compare the first stage to coffee splashed on a white shirt: wipe it immediately and it may come out. Leave it, and it slowly becomes a stain that washing no longer removes. Glycation starts as an unstable reaction and gradually turns into stable advanced glycation end products, or AGEs.

A protein that is replaced quickly would carry these marks only briefly. Dermal collagen is a long-lived protein with very slow turnover, so glycation and other chemical damage have years to accumulate. That is why the standard advice has always been prevention. Not drinking coffee prevents new stains; it does nothing for a stain that set ten years ago (in the video at 05:00). If you want the background on how blood sugar marks collagen in the first place, my video note on sugar sag and what HbA1c says about skin collagen covers it.

Which AGE did the 2026 study target?

Short answer: it targeted CML, one of many AGEs, and CML works differently from the cross-links people usually picture.

As collagen ages, it collects not one but many kinds of AGEs: CML, CEL, pentosidine, glucosepane and others (in the video at 02:30). You don't need to memorise them, but two are worth knowing.

Glucosepane can link one collagen molecule to the one next to it, like a chemical padlock between them. This is a cross-link. As cross-links build up, they change the physical properties of the extracellular matrix, the scaffold of the dermis. "Glycation makes collagen stiff" is a fair simplification of this part.

CML, the subject of the 2026 paper, is not a cross-linking AGE (in the video at 03:35). It acts mainly through RAGE, a receptor on the cell surface that works like an antenna. When certain AGEs bind to it, signals switch on inside the cell, including the NF-κB pathway linked to inflammation and oxidative stress from reactive oxygen species. That environment can damage tissue further and disturb how the matrix is remodelled.

So AGEs harm skin in two ways: by changing structure, and by changing the signals cells receive (in the video at 04:29). Keep that distinction in mind, because it decides what the new result does and does not mean.

How did CMLase repair existing glycation?

Short answer: researchers built an enzyme that does not just remove CML but converts it back into lysine, the normal amino acid it came from.

CML forms when lysine, an ordinary building block of proteins, goes through several chemical reactions. The researchers asked the reverse question: could CML be turned back into lysine (in the video at 05:35)? The obstacle was that no enzyme in nature does this in the way they needed.

Their solution was to make one. They screened more than 500 million enzyme variants and selected one that processes CML very efficiently, which they named CMLase (in the video at 06:06). What impressed me is that the modified site was repaired to its original state rather than simply cut away. Depending on the test protein, CML fell by as much as 97% in the laboratory.

The real test was human tissue. The team used tissue donated by elderly people who had lived 70 or 80 years and treated it with CMLase. CML dropped by more than 70% in artery tissue and by more than 55% in skin tissue (in the video at 06:48).

What the 55% does not mean

Short answer: it does not mean 55% of the glycation in aged skin was reversed, and it does not mean anyone's face looked younger.

You will probably see headlines claiming that research has reversed 55% of glycation in aged skin (in the video at 07:09). That is not accurate, for three reasons.

• It was one AGE. The 55% refers only to CML, not to AGEs as a whole.
• It was the signalling side, not the structure. CML is not a structural cross-link, so this result relates to the signalling problem. The cross-links that stiffen collagen were not shown to be removed (in the video at 07:35).
• It was donated tissue, outside the body. This was an ex vivo study; CMLase was not injected into a living person's face. The paper does not tell us whether wrinkles improved, elasticity recovered or collagen became more like young collagen (in the video at 07:54).

So my honest answer to "can glycation be reversed?" is this: one specific mark, in donated tissue in a laboratory, partly yes; in your own skin, not yet.

Why I still see this as a turning point

Short answer: aging care has so far aimed at less future damage, and this study shows that existing chemical damage can, at least for one AGE, be repaired directly.

Until now, aging care has meant blocking ultraviolet light, managing blood sugar and encouraging new collagen: ways to be damaged less from here on (in the video at 08:51). This study went in a different direction and repaired a chemical mark of aging on an old protein. If an enzyme can be designed for CML, it is reasonable to ask whether others could be designed for other AGEs, perhaps one day releasing old cross-links between collagen fibres and restoring the skin's mechanical properties without damaging the collagen itself (in the video at 08:14). That would be a completely different kind of treatment, and it does not exist today. The question in aging research may shift from "how do we age less?" to "how much of the aging that has already happened can we undo?"

In the meantime, you will hear more and more about anti-glycation products. If you remember only that not all AGEs are the same, it will help you tell advertising from real research (in the video at 09:42). Practical steps for glycation you can take now are not covered in this video; I said I would make a separate one on that.

For what clinic care can realistically do for aging skin, my overview of how I layer Korean anti-aging treatments and my guide to matching each wrinkle to a Korean wrinkle treatment are good starting points, and the full list of VOS treatments is online. You can also read creator experiences at VOS.

Results vary from person to person, and whether any treatment suits you is decided at an in-person consultation.

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Results, swelling and recovery vary from person to person. This page is general information from VOS Dermatology Clinic based on Dr. Kim's video and does not replace an in-person consultation.