#1

I want to make 0.1% Topical Rapamycin Cream. How do I go about doing this?

I know Dr greens formula, but I just want to make sur ei have everything 100% before I do it.

Can i use any ointment? Like vaseline? Do I literally just crush up the powder and mix it in the vaseline?

Say I had 30ml vaseline, how many tablets mg of sirolimus would I need to make 0.1%? I have heard someone using transcultol, but i have no idea how to use this or what it even is? Would me mixing the powder from the tablets in the vaseline be enough to make the 0.1% cream? Is it safe?

#2

For a 0.1% solution with 30 ml of ointment youā€™d need to crush 30 mg of rapamycin. Personally I donā€™t believe using straight Vaseline or Aquaphor is very effective since these are thick petroleum based products that donā€™t have anything in them like Transcutol to help deliver it into the skin. Plus I donā€™t know how well the rapa dissolved in Transcutol would mix with the petroleum jelly. They would also be pretty greasy.

As for the percentage, why are you shooting for 0.1%? Last time I looked at Alan Greenā€™s formula it was 0.045%. The only paper we have on topical rapa was the Drexel study which used a far lower percentage of 0.001%.

On the last batch I made, I went for slightly lower than Alan Greenā€™s formula and made a 0.027% solution. To make it, I crushed up 16 mg of rapamycin and dissolved it in 10 ml Transcutol before stirring it into about 50 g of Cerave daily moisturizing cream.

hereā€™s a helpful calculator for grams of solute into a volume of solution:

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#3

I have a skin condition where 0.1% + is recommended, although 0.1% seems safe and recommended. So I can literally get 30ml of some cream and mix the powder from 30mg sirolimus in? Can I use CeraVe Blue Moisturising Lotion? Thank you!

#4

You could just put 30 mg into 30 ml of lotion to reach 0.1%, but there isnā€™t really anything in the lotion to dissolve the rapa into, so itā€™s unknown how effective it would be at getting any of the rapa into the skin. For that reason, those of us on the forum whoā€™ve made topical solutions use Transcutol to first dissolve the crushed rapa tablets into first, and then mix that into whatever cream/lotion.

Hereā€™s a table with solubility of rapa into different compounds:

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Rapamycin-solubility-in-the-solvents-used-and-formulations-at-25-C_tbl2_345497760

Hereā€™s a source of inexpensive Transcutol. It goes by a few different names, and Ethoxydiglycol is one of them:

Depending on how thick or thin you want to make it, you can play with the ratio of cream to Transcutol (with rapa crushed and dissolved). You could try:

20 g lotion + 10 g Transcutol (or ml, since the mass of lotion and Transcutol are all close to 1 g/ml) + 30 mg rapa dissolved, for a 0.1% solution. 0.1% is a fairly high concentration, so it will take a lot of rapa to make a large quantity.

When I made the 0.027% cream, I crushed 16 mg of rapa, dissolved it in 10 ml of Transcutol, and mixed it with about 50 g of CeraVe Moisturizing Cream and the consistency was basically the same as regular cream.

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#5

These instructions and discussions outline how to do it pretty wellā€¦ DIY, Do it yourselfā€¦

#6

This is so so helpful- thank you so much! In terms of storage, is there any specific container I should store it in? And can I scale up in that ratio, eg 40g lotion, 20g transcutol, 60mg rapa? Thank you so much and sorry if this sounds stupid- i dont know anything about rapa/ making my own cream. Thanks.

#7

I just put it back in the original container after mixing it in a kitchen bowl with a mixer (obviously you have to take a little of the cream out to make room for the rapamycin/transcutol mixture.

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#8

Yes you can scale it up as you suggest.

Any container will work, but itā€™s probably better for it not to be a clear container so as to protect the rapa from light. In my case, I bought the big tub of CeraVe, so weighed the 50 g into a smaller container like these and mixed in the transcutol + rapa mixture.

https://www.amazon.com/JQYXSS-Plastic-Storage-Container-Cosmetic/dp/B08YXJQ937/ref=sr_1_49?crid=19LETB1AU0B8K&keywords=cream+container&qid=1697307078&sprefix=cream+containe%2Caps%2C147&sr=8-49

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#9

Thank you so much again both of you. Would you say that I should wash my hands after dealing with the cream? I am trying to use it for facial redness relief.

#10

The amount of filler can fluctuate by brand, but my tablets are over 99% filler. So, even though 60mg of rapa will easily dissolve in 20g transcutol, with the filler included it might be harder. I think most of the posts Iā€™ve seen on this site would translate to 30-120g of transcutol for 60mg of rapa. You might find 20g to be challenging to work with in a DIY setup.