Merely getting more active into the skin will likely not, and no...

Merely getting more active into the skin will likely not, and no one should ever have expected that it would, provide a clinically significant result. This is certainly true when existing formulations with poor skin penetration have been already formulated to deliver a therapeutic dose through the skin, however inefficiently. Adding more active won't necessarily get you more result, otherwise the original formulation would simply have been 15% instead of a 5% formulation, side effects notwithstanding.

So anyone expecting that this trial was going to provide a spectacular improvement in clinical results was doomed to disappointment from the get-go.

This effort is about maybe being able to reduce the tretinoin content of an acne treatment with no loss of efficacy, and with improved compliance due to less erythemia and dry skin. If this goes further, I pretty sure that will be the direction it takes, but somebody else ought to fund the dose finding trials.