— In August, I covered groundbreaking new research related to successful hair regeneration in mice. The work was led by scientists from USC (in particular, Dr. Mingxing Lei and Dr. Cheng-Ming Chuong). For some reason, a new CNBC article on this now relatively old news appeared in October and became the most widely covered hair related story this month. Three different people posted the exact same CNBC link in the comments to the last post, and one person even responded with two different takes to the exact same link and story. To be fair, even people on Reddit Futurology (where a week old story is old news) seemed to think that this was a new development.

— Thanks to commentator “Karl” for posting a link to a new study from China regarding electrodynamic microneedling in the comments to my Indian microneedling post from August. Yet again, microneedling seems to lead to significantly increased hair growth when used in conjunction with Minoxidil versus when using just Minoxidil by itself. However, even more interesting, microneedling by itself led to more hair growth than Minoxidil by itself in this study (EDIT: per several commentators who read the full study, this is not accurate and at best you can only say that both resulted in equal new hair growth). Totally crazy that something like wounding works better than one of the only two ever FDA approved hair loss treatments out there. Of course more such results need to be emulated before this becomes believable.

Follica has for a long time claimed that skin disruption in and of itself leads to new de novo hair follicle growth. In the India microneedling post, “Karl” made an interesting lengthy comment related to the above study, and it is worth a read in its entirety. I will paste part of it related to needling depth here:

“Personal observation: that difference of 1.5mm to 2.5mm might seem small, but if you’ve ever done it, you know that it’s HUGE. 1.5mm hurts a lot already, and for some people is borderline unbearable. 2.5mm is getting into torture level lol. Pity they weren’t more specific about their procedure. The question of depth, wounding, and scarring seems an open question in research afaik and is discussed frequently on forums”.

— Samumed added a new page on its site regarding the status of each of its clinical trials. They just Tweeted that link.

— Seems like commentator “egghead” gave great advice regarding waiting to buy a newly public company after the initial turbulence is over. HAIR stock down drastically in the past 3 days.

— PolarityTE latest press release and new video.

— Replicel’s hair loss work covered in Forbes magazine.

— Fecal matter transplant regrows hair in two alopecia areata patients.

— Dr. David Saceda has been responding to questions by “Tim”. It looks like better ways of measuring DHT and other hormone levels during messotherapy with Dutasteride treatments might be necessary.

The annual World Congress for Hair Research is the most important conference of the year when it comes to hair loss related research. While some of the presentations at this conference always cover existing treatments (such as finasteride, hair transplants and wigs), the majority cover more futuristic technologies and research. Some presentations also entail entirely new takes upon existing technologies and research.

Previously I covered both the 8th World Congress for Hair Research in 2014 and the 9th World Congress for Hair Research in 2015. For some reason, there was no conference in 2016. However, the 10th World Congress for Hair Research is scheduled to take place in Kyoto, Japan from October 31st 2017 through November 3rd 2017.

Moreover, just as in 2015, “Hellouser” is attending the conference and has e-mailed me that he will be posting his videos on youtube, but still needs to raise some more funds. You can donate towards his trip here. He is regularly posting updates in this thread on HLT.

Key Presentations of Interest

As is always the case at this Congress, a who’s who of the hair loss research world is presenting. Asia based researchers are especially well represented this time around. Readers can go through the oral presentation list and see which items interest them. Poster presentation list is here.

It is hard to try to compile a list of just 10 or so items of interest as I have done in the past, since around one-third of the presentations look highly interesting. Some initial thoughts:

• While it seems like locally based Dr. Takashi Tsuji from RIKEN is not presenting in person, another researcher (Dr. Koh-ei Toyoshima) who collaborates with Dr. Tsuji is presenting: “Basic study to clinical phase, a fully functional organ regenerative therapy for the hair follicle”.
• Also from RIKEN, Dr. Hironobu Fujiwara will discuss “Reciprocal interactions between epidermal stem cells and their environment”.
• The other renowned locally headquartered entity of interest, Shiseido, is very much present. Several of the company’s researchers are participating, including the respected Dr. Jiro Kishimoto.
• Dr. Mayumi Ito will discuss something that all of us have discussed on here a lot lately: “Wound healing and hair follicle regeneration”.
• Dr. George Cotsarelis discusses prostaglandins.
• Dr. Bessam Farjo is one of many keynote speakers, and his lecture is titled: “A new approach to hair cell therapy: Combining medical and scientific innovation in hair ‘cloning'”.
• Most of the topics in the “Stem Cells and the Niche” and “Tissue Engineering using Hair Follicle Cells” sections are of major relevance to this blog’s subject matter. Six of the ten presentations in these two sections are by Japanese researchers (!); three are by Korean researchers (!); and one by Germany’s Dr. Gerd Lindner who seemed to have disappeared in recent years. His presentation is titled “Bioengineering human hair follicle anlagen within a full thickness skin equivalent”.
• Dr. Antonella Tosti has an interesting presentation titled: “A new topical WNT/beta-catenin activator in the treatment of men with male pattern hair loss”. What could that topical be?
• A significant number of presentations concern natural products (aloe, botanicals, ginseng, green tea, Korean native plants), lasers and PRP. All these treatments are somewhat controversial, at least insofar as regrowing hair on totally bald regions of the scalp goes.
• “Alopecia areata” and “female hair loss” are both well covered subjects, especially the former.
• Surprisingly, while more than five presentations cover Finasteride, none covers Dutasteride, even though the latter is approved as a hair loss treatment in Japan and South Korea.

I have discussed the Wnt/β-catenin pathway and Wnt signaling numerous times on this blog in the past. This avenue of research is one of the most exciting ones out there in the hair loss world. It does not involve any kind of complicated cell multiplication and implantation related procedure. If realized, the cure or treatment for hair loss that will arise from activating the Wnt signaling pathway (and subsequently maintaining the epithelial β-catenin signaling) will likely come from a topical product.

Of note, defects in the workings of the Wnt pathway are implicated in numerous diseases and medical conditions. Therefore, there are numerous scientists around the world who are studying this important subject matter for non-alopecia related reasons.

Wnt Signaling and Hair Loss: Updates

• By far the most well known company that is currently working on a topical hair loss drug to activate this pathway is Samumed. We are all eagerly awaiting their publication of final Phase II clinical trial results and subsequent commencement of Phase III trials. Several people recently noted that Samumed just completed Phase II trials, but I think that those were completed last year per this official government source. However, detailed published results are still not final. In any case, perhaps the pipeline page’s bar for the SM04554 hair loss product did move forward a bit recently per one commentator implication? I am on the company’s mailing list, but have received no recent email updates regarding the hair loss product. I am hoping it will happen any day now. Worth monitoring their Twitter account.

• In my last post, I mentioned that Dr. Antonella Tosti is presenting a paper titled “A new topical Wnt/beta-catenin activator in the treatment of men with male pattern hair loss”. I wondered what topical this would be, and commentator “Bob Ross’s Hair” hypothesized that is was methyl vanillate based on this study from 2016 in which Dr. Tosti is a co-author.

• Related to the above, Dr. John Cole’s staff recently wrote a blog post on their new WNT Act product for in the US. Dr. Cole has collaborated with Dr. Tosti (and various other Italian scientists) many times in the past and mentioned this in his interview on this blog in the past. It seems like the Deltacrin WNT product sold in Italy is the exact same thing as the WNT Act product being sold in the US. On the US product’s Amazon page, they claim a 7% increase in hair density and a 10% increase in hair diameter.

• Commentator “Donitello” who often posts nonsense did surprise me and found a gem early last week that all my google alerts missed. A South Korean company named JW Pharmaceutical (in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. George Cotsarelis) is developing a topical Wnt signal activating product to tackle hair loss. The product is currently known as CWL08006, and the company aims to start pre-clinical trials in 2019 and certain types of human testing in 2018. Apparently JW Pharma has been conducting research on the Wnt pathway since the early 2000s, and currently holds numerous patents and rights to proprietary compounds in this area.

Every time when I feel like my discussion about Aclaris Therapeutics and their soft topical JAK inhibitors for treating androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is finally done for at least 3 months, some new surprise comes up. I say “surprise” because the company has not even as yet commenced Phase 1 clinical trials for their AGA product (see pipeline), so regular unique updates are always unexpected.

This week I got several emails from Aclaris, and they mentioned their continued work and plans for the topical JAK product to treat AGA. Nothing much new in there. However, earlier today, my google alerts for Aclaris gave me a link to this new informative eight page interview with the CEO Dr. Neal Walker. How does “Seeking Alpha” get these interviews before other sites?

In any case, I had to re-register with the above site in order to see the whole interview (which can be set to show up on one page instead of on eight pages). A key quote from the CEO clearly stood out and necessitated my writing this post:

“We also intend to initiate a Phase 2 open-label trial with ATI-50002 in AGA that is androgenetic alopecia in the first half of 2018.”

If this really does happen as scheduled, it would be superb news. However:

1. I am a bit confused about why their topical AGA product in their pipeline is not labeled as ATI-50002, even though the above quote implies as such.
2. It would be useful to know how they can skip Phase 1 clinical trials since their pipeline still shows those as not having even commenced as of today. As many have postulated in the past, since some of these topical JAK inhibitors have already been tested for other uses and by other companies such as Confluence, perhaps Phase 1 trials can be skipped or sped up?
3. They plan to conduct open-label trials, which can be a bit biased it seems.

In any event, unless the interview with Mr. Walker was transcribed incorrectly, this is a big development and the first half 2018 goal comes right from the horse’s mouth. H/T to Malcolm for pushing me to write this post today.

In 2014, I wrote a post on topical finasteride that has since became one of the most read posts on this blog ever. In hindsight, this is not surprising when considering the fact that I get emails about topical finasteride at least several times a month. People really want to ditch oral finasteride and switch to the topical version in order to reduce their chances of side effects.

Local compounding pharmacies in most cities will be able to make topical finasteride for you if you ask them. However, most of us are eagerly awaiting two thoroughly tested products that could be available for sale worldwide in the near future.

1. The first of these two is Spanish (previously Swiss) company Polichem’s P-3074 product, which I have covered on this blog several times in the past. European Phase 3 clinical trials for P-3074 are almost completed, while US Phase 3 clinical trials are expected to be completed in May 2018. Moreover, in 2016, an Italian study found the product (when applied to the scalp twice per day) to have superior results to oral finasteride. Several other favorable studies from prior years have also been covered on this blog in the past. P-3074 is vehicled in Hydroxypropyl-Chitosan.
2. The second of these two products is Canadian hair transplant clinic Hasson & Wong’s topical Finasteride, which is being manufactured in partnership with Italy’s Farmacia Parati. Without this partnership with a well known reputable pharmacy, I would have not put this product in the same category as Polichem’s product. The Hasson & Wong product is a liposomal formulation that has been modified via the attachment of silicone particles to the liposomes.

Perhaps a third company can develop nanoparticle based finasteride delivery in the future?

Dr. Hasson Provides an Update

Since 2014, Dr. Victor Hasson has provided this blog with regular updates about the status of his clinic’s topical finasteride (e.g., see here and here). While Canadian hair loss sufferers have been able to obtain the product from his clinic (and Europeans have been able to access the product via Farmacia Parati), people in other regions of the world including the US have had no such luck. There are a number of regulatory hurdles that Dr. Hasson has been trying to overcome in order to sell in the US.

Last week, Dr. Hasson called me out of the blue and mentioned some new developments, the gist of which are highlighted in the latest blog post on his website. I did not record his call, but below are some highlights that I recollect:

• Dr. Hasson will answer any intelligent reader questions if you post them in the comments to this post.
• Hasson & Wong will no longer prescribe oral finasteride and has entirely moved to topical finasteride as their latest blog post mentions.
• Since February 2017, they have been using their third generation of topical finasteride.
• Results from topical finasteride (based on analysis of around 800 patients in the Vancouver, BC area over the past several years) have been at least as good as those from oral finasteride.
• Side effects from topical finasteride have so far been nonexistent.
• The Hasson & Wong clinic will post a number of updates with patient photos related to this latest development on their website in the coming weeks.
• US sales should finally become a reality in the near future as Dr. Hasson has selected some pharmacies in the US that will compound his proprietary product.
• I asked about topical dutasteride (which interests me more than topical finasteride), and Dr. Hasson mentioned that this product is next in line. He talked about some scientific reason that makes the topical dutasteride molecule even more amenable to the scalp and scalp absorption than the topical finasteride molecule. I will ask him to elaborate in the comments to this post.
• Dr. Hasson mentioned that it has been difficult for him to get his hands on sufficient quantities of dutasteride and therefore their research in that area has lagged. Results from topical dutasteride are superior to those from topical finasteride, as would be expected from what we know about the oral versions of both drugs.

— Hair related updates at the bottom today.

— Last month, I decided to stop covering medical items of interest in my once a month “brief items of interest” posts. It was becoming a bit too much work to try to pick around 5-10 of the most interesting medical developments each month among the 100s out there.

Lo and behold comes today’s potentially blockbuster medical development regarding a subject matter that I have covered on this blog several times before: the world’s first ever head transplant (or more accurately, a “full body transplant” onto an existing “live” head). It seems like the world’s first successful head transplant ***albeit between two dead people*** has just taken place successfully in China under the supervision of Dr. Xiaoping Ren (with input from Dr. Sergio Canavero/aka Dr. Frankenstein), both of whom I have covered on this blog in the past. However, the procedure was undertaken between two cadavers (i.e., dead people) so is still not really a proper head transplant. Dr. Canavero claims that the transplantation of a live human’s head to a deceased human’s still working body (i.e., a true “full body” transplant) is now absolutely imminent. Lots of coverage about this in the media today and continued skepticism (but significantly less so than in the past).

Is Dr. Canavero just in it for the fame or is he for real?

— Also, from the past two weeks, the first man to have his genes edited inside his body (US); and  successful skin epidermis replacement via gene modification (Germany). Both developments are major groundbreaking medical breakthroughs.

And in Hair Research Updates:

— Excellent effort by “Hellouser” in his huge number of updates/threads from the recent World Congress for Hair Research. An absolute must read.

— Reader “omg” posted a very interesting link today to a paper co-authored by renowned hair loss researchers Dr. Neil Saddick and Dr. Valerie Callender and others titled “New Insight Into the Pathophysiology of Hair Loss Trigger a Paradigm Shift in the Treatment Approach“. Lots of discussion in there about the role of inflammation in hair loss. The whole paper can be downloaded from the above link.

— Latest Aclaris patent grants covering baricitinib, decernotinib, ruxolitinib, and tofacitinib. It seems like all four can end up being used for treating androgenetic alopecia, especially tofacitinib.

— Dr. Rachita Dhurat is at it again. This time, her team makes the surprising conclusion that “A caffeine-based topical liquid should be considered as not inferior to minoxidil 5% solution in men with androgenetic alopecia“.

— Histogen and Dr. Gail Naughton covered in Allure Magazine. Key quote:

“The U.S. trials are planned to commence in 2018; we expect it to gain approval in Mexico first, perhaps in 2020, and then in the U.S. sometime after that”.

— UK male model Jeremy McConnell gets a hair transplant and beard transplant in Turkey.

Edit: It seems like this study was first published in June 2017 (see “omg”‘s comment in this post). Not sure why they now have this newer November 2017 publication date and why the global media only covered it so intensively this past week. Anyway, well done “omg” for being ahead of the curve.

Last week, several of my alerts led to South Korean websites that discussed new successful local research targeting the Wnt pathway to reverse hair loss. Since I very recently wrote a post concerning the Wnt pathway, I was planning to save this news for my next “brief items of interest” post.

However, first reader “Malcolm” emailed me and said that this development was worth its own post. Thereafter, in the past week, four different people commented about this news. And there are now many brief online news articles being published on this subject daily it seems. So I decided it was worth writing a second post related to Wnt in less than a month.

Targeting of CXXC5 by a Competing Peptide Stimulates Hair Regrowth

The actual paper was published in the prestigious Journal of Investigative Dermatology. South Korean scientists found that CXXC-type zinc finger protein 5 (CXXC5) is a negative regulator of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway. In fact, CXXC5 is upregulated in both thinning hair and arrector pili muscles in balding scalps.

The scientists managed to disrupt something termed as the “CXXC5-Dishevelled interaction” with a newly developed competitor peptide biomaterial called PTD-DBM. This resulted in activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway and accelerated hair regrowth and wound-induced hair follicle neogenesis in mice. Yet more evidence on the benefits of wounding?

Interestingly, at the start of the above paper, they also mention the famous hair loss researcher Dr. Luis Garza and his recent paper (co-authored with Dr. Dangwon Kim) titled “The Negative Regulator CXXC5: Making WNT Look a Little Less Dishevelled“. Perhaps Dr. Garza is also collaborating on this research?

Valproic Acid and Hair

Also of interest, the scientists added valproic acid into the mix and found that it sped up hair growth in the mice. There has been some evidence on the benefits of valproic acid to scalp hair in the past. In fact a seminal work on the subject also came from South Korea in 2014, when scientists found that topical valproic acid increases hair counts in balding men. Apparently, valproic activates the activates the Wnt/β-catenin pathway (and inhibits glycogen synthase kinase 3β).

South Korean Sources

Below are some of the online South Korean sites that covered this story. This research must be significant enough to be covered in so many local sources. Moreover, while the research team was led by Dr. Kang-Yell Choi of Yonsei University, some of the below sources suggest involvement of the South Korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning in this work.

• The Korea Herald
• The Korea Times
• Korea Joongang Daily
• Yonhap News
• Business Korea

Future Drug Development

The UK’s Metro newspaper covered this story today. Key quote from Kang-Yell Choi, the main researcher involved:

“We have found a protein that controls the hair growth and developed a new substance that promotes hair regeneration by controlling the function of the protein. We expect that the newly developed substance will contribute to the development of a drug that not only treats hair loss but also regenerate damaged skin tissues”.

Mr. Kang-Yell Choi seems to have many patents related to the Wnt/β-catenin pathway to his name. He even has his own wikipedia entry.

For a long time, I have had a post on the back burner discussing how people with hair loss are more likely to suffer from a number of major health problems. For a blog that is generally highly optimistic, I was (in a twisted sense) looking forward to finally writing an entirely negative post so as to please the 1-2 percent of regular readers who only seem to want to see negativity and pessimism in everything. I do try to make everyone who visits this blog feel engaged, including those who seem to genuinely get their daily highs from bad news (or not sufficiently “good enough good news”) and subsequent venting.

Today’s big news of the day (see further below) finally pushed me into finalizing and publishing this pessimistic post. However, I ended up deciding to only focus on heart disease or else the post became way too lengthy. Perhaps I will discuss the other medical afflictions that correlate positively with male pattern hair loss in Christmas?

Being a smart aleck aside, the main reason for writing this post is to encourage the male readers of this blog to get a heart checkup and try to keep key risk factors such as blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, glucose levels and triglycerides in check.

Hair Loss, Prematurely Graying Hair and Heart Disease

Over the years there have been a number of studies from around the world (e.g., this one from Japan in 2013) that have concluded that men who suffer from heart disease are also much more likely to suffer from male pattern hair loss. Today comes news of yet another such study, this time examining 2,060 young men below the age of 40 in India (with the study undertaken by the European Society of Cardiology). 790 of the study participants suffered from coronary artery disease (CAD), also known as heart disease. BBC and various other major networks have covered this important development.

The researchers found that 50 percent of the men who suffered from CAD also suffered from prematurely graying hair, while a significantly less 30 percent of the men without graying hair had CAD. A similar correlation was found between those who suffered from male pattern hair loss versus those who did not and their respective heart disease rates (49 percent versus 27 percent). However, even more shocking:

“After adjusting for age and other cardiovascular risk factors, male-pattern baldness was associated with a 5.6 times greater risk of coronary artery disease and premature greying was associated with a 5.3 times greater risk”.

It seems like testosterone and/or dihydrotestosterone impact both male hair quality and male heart health negatively in those with the relevant bad genes (with inflammation also involved in both conditions). It does not seem like women have this problem, probably due to their producing far less amounts of male hormones (plus the heart protective effects of estrogen in their younger years).

I should, however, note that my 98 year old grandmother still has at least 75 percent of her scalp hair pigmented and absolutely no signs of heart disease. Perhaps when they do such a study on women, they might also find similar correlations, albeit not as strong as in men?

Earlier age hair loss and hair graying are a sign of overall rapid body ageing in some (but definitely far from all) people. In the latest BBC article that I linked to above, one of the scientists quoted suggests that DNA damage from ageing was a potential reason for early onset hair loss, early onset hair graying and early onset heart disease. Of course there are many people who go bald or grey very early and live to be over a 100 with no signs of heart disease…probably because they have certain genetic protections (e.g., high HDL “good” cholesterol levels) towards heart disease.

Celebrity Watch for the TMZ Crowd

Whenever I think of prematurely graying celebrities, the first name that comes to my mind is CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who went grey in his 30s, and entirely white in his 40s. He has mentioned in a number of interviews about how he misses his darker brown hair.

Mr. Cooper is currently 50 years old and seems extremely healthy. However, while researching this post, I found out that Mr. Cooper’s father died at 50…from heart disease. I wonder if the father also had grey hair at the time of his death? Hopefully Mr. Cooper is keeping his blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose and triglyceride levels in check.

Also of note, Patrick Stewart (a hero for many balding men), is still going strong at the age of 77 despite going bald at 19. Something he describes as traumatic in this interview.

— In August, I covered groundbreaking new research related to successful hair regeneration in mice. The work was led by scientists from USC (in particular, Dr. Mingxing Lei and Dr. Cheng-Ming Chuong). For some reason, a new CNBC article on this now relatively old news appeared in October and became the most widely covered hair related story this month. Three different people posted the exact same CNBC link in the comments to the last post, and one person even responded with two different takes to the exact same link and story. To be fair, even people on Reddit Futurology (where a week old story is old news) seemed to think that this was a new development.

— Thanks to commentator “Karl” for posting a link to a new study from China regarding electrodynamic microneedling in the comments to my Indian microneedling post from August. Yet again, microneedling seems to lead to significantly increased hair growth when used in conjunction with Minoxidil versus when using just Minoxidil by itself. However, even more interesting, microneedling by itself led to more hair growth than Minoxidil by itself in this study (EDIT: per several commentators who read the full study, this is not accurate and at best you can only say that both resulted in equal new hair growth). Totally crazy that something like wounding works better than one of the only two ever FDA approved hair loss treatments out there. Of course more such results need to be emulated before this becomes believable.

Follica has for a long time claimed that skin disruption in and of itself leads to new de novo hair follicle growth. In the India microneedling post, “Karl” made an interesting lengthy comment related to the above study, and it is worth a read in its entirety. I will paste part of it related to needling depth here:

“Personal observation: that difference of 1.5mm to 2.5mm might seem small, but if you’ve ever done it, you know that it’s HUGE. 1.5mm hurts a lot already, and for some people is borderline unbearable. 2.5mm is getting into torture level lol. Pity they weren’t more specific about their procedure. The question of depth, wounding, and scarring seems an open question in research afaik and is discussed frequently on forums”.

— Samumed added a new page on its site regarding the status of each of its clinical trials. They just Tweeted that link.

— Seems like commentator “egghead” gave great advice regarding waiting to buy a newly public company after the initial turbulence is over. HAIR stock down drastically in the past 3 days.

— PolarityTE latest press release and new video.

— Replicel’s hair loss work covered in Forbes magazine.

— Fecal matter transplant regrows hair in two alopecia areata patients.

— Dr. David Saceda has been responding to questions by “Tim”. It looks like better ways of measuring DHT and other hormone levels during messotherapy with Dutasteride treatments might be necessary.

The annual World Congress for Hair Research is the most important conference of the year when it comes to hair loss related research. While some of the presentations at this conference always cover existing treatments (such as finasteride, hair transplants and wigs), the majority cover more futuristic technologies and research. Some presentations also entail entirely new takes upon existing technologies and research.

Previously I covered both the 8th World Congress for Hair Research in 2014 and the 9th World Congress for Hair Research in 2015. For some reason, there was no conference in 2016. However, the 10th World Congress for Hair Research is scheduled to take place in Kyoto, Japan from October 31st 2017 through November 3rd 2017.

Moreover, just as in 2015, “Hellouser” is attending the conference and has e-mailed me that he will be posting his videos on youtube, but still needs to raise some more funds. You can donate towards his trip here. He is regularly posting updates in this thread on HLT.

Key Presentations of Interest

As is always the case at this Congress, a who’s who of the hair loss research world is presenting. Asia based researchers are especially well represented this time around. Readers can go through the oral presentation list and see which items interest them. Poster presentation list is here.

It is hard to try to compile a list of just 10 or so items of interest as I have done in the past, since around one-third of the presentations look highly interesting. Some initial thoughts:

• While it seems like locally based Dr. Takashi Tsuji from RIKEN is not presenting in person, another researcher (Dr. Koh-ei Toyoshima) who collaborates with Dr. Tsuji is presenting: “Basic study to clinical phase, a fully functional organ regenerative therapy for the hair follicle”.
• Also from RIKEN, Dr. Hironobu Fujiwara will discuss “Reciprocal interactions between epidermal stem cells and their environment”.
• The other renowned locally headquartered entity of interest, Shiseido, is very much present. Several of the company’s researchers are participating, including the respected Dr. Jiro Kishimoto.
• Dr. Mayumi Ito will discuss something that all of us have discussed on here a lot lately: “Wound healing and hair follicle regeneration”.
• Dr. George Cotsarelis discusses prostaglandins.
• Dr. Bessam Farjo is one of many keynote speakers, and his lecture is titled: “A new approach to hair cell therapy: Combining medical and scientific innovation in hair ‘cloning'”.
• Most of the topics in the “Stem Cells and the Niche” and “Tissue Engineering using Hair Follicle Cells” sections are of major relevance to this blog’s subject matter. Six of the ten presentations in these two sections are by Japanese researchers (!); three are by Korean researchers (!); and one by Germany’s Dr. Gerd Lindner who seemed to have disappeared in recent years. His presentation is titled “Bioengineering human hair follicle anlagen within a full thickness skin equivalent”.
• Dr. Antonella Tosti has an interesting presentation titled: “A new topical WNT/beta-catenin activator in the treatment of men with male pattern hair loss”. What could that topical be?
• A significant number of presentations concern natural products (aloe, botanicals, ginseng, green tea, Korean native plants), lasers and PRP. All these treatments are somewhat controversial, at least insofar as regrowing hair on totally bald regions of the scalp goes.
• “Alopecia areata” and “female hair loss” are both well covered subjects, especially the former.
• Surprisingly, while more than five presentations cover Finasteride, none covers Dutasteride, even though the latter is approved as a hair loss treatment in Japan and South Korea.

I have discussed the Wnt/β-catenin pathway and Wnt signaling numerous times on this blog in the past. This avenue of research is one of the most exciting ones out there in the hair loss world. It does not involve any kind of complicated cell multiplication and implantation related procedure. If realized, the cure or treatment for hair loss that will arise from activating the Wnt signaling pathway (and subsequently maintaining the epithelial β-catenin signaling) will likely come from a topical product.

Of note, defects in the workings of the Wnt pathway are implicated in numerous diseases and medical conditions. Therefore, there are numerous scientists around the world who are studying this important subject matter for non-alopecia related reasons.

Wnt Signaling and Hair Loss: Updates

• By far the most well known company that is currently working on a topical hair loss drug to activate this pathway is Samumed. We are all eagerly awaiting their publication of final Phase II clinical trial results and subsequent commencement of Phase III trials. Several people recently noted that Samumed just completed Phase II trials, but I think that those were completed last year per this official government source. However, detailed published results are still not final. In any case, perhaps the pipeline page’s bar for the SM04554 hair loss product did move forward a bit recently per one commentator implication? I am on the company’s mailing list, but have received no recent email updates regarding the hair loss product. I am hoping it will happen any day now. Worth monitoring their Twitter account.

• In my last post, I mentioned that Dr. Antonella Tosti is presenting a paper titled “A new topical Wnt/beta-catenin activator in the treatment of men with male pattern hair loss”. I wondered what topical this would be, and commentator “Bob Ross’s Hair” hypothesized that is was methyl vanillate based on this study from 2016 in which Dr. Tosti is a co-author.

• Related to the above, Dr. John Cole’s staff recently wrote a blog post on their new WNT Act product for sale in the US. This product contains methyl vanillate. Dr. Cole has collaborated with Dr. Tosti (and various other Italian scientists) many times in the past and mentioned this in his interview on this blog. It seems like the Deltacrin WNT product sold in Italy is the exact same thing as the WNT Act product being sold in the US. On the US product’s Amazon page, they claim a 7% increase in hair density and a 10% increase in hair diameter.

• Commentator “Donitello” who often posts nonsense did surprise me and found a gem early last week that all my google alerts missed. A South Korean company named JW Pharmaceutical (in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania and Dr. George Cotsarelis) is developing a topical Wnt signal activating product to tackle hair loss. The product is currently known as CWL08006, and the company aims to start pre-clinical trials in 2019 and certain types of human testing in 2018. Apparently JW Pharma has been conducting research on the Wnt pathway since the early 2000s, and currently holds numerous patents and rights to proprietary compounds in this area.

Every time when I feel like my discussion about Aclaris Therapeutics and their soft topical JAK inhibitors for treating androgenetic alopecia (AGA) is finally done for at least 3 months, some new surprise comes up. I say “surprise” because the company has not even as yet commenced Phase 1 clinical trials for their AGA product (see pipeline), so regular unique updates are always unexpected.

This week I got several emails from Aclaris, and they mentioned their continued work and plans for the topical JAK product to treat AGA. Nothing much new in there. However, earlier today, my google alerts for Aclaris gave me a link to this new informative eight page interview with the CEO Dr. Neal Walker and various others. How does “Seeking Alpha” get these interviews before other sites?

In any case, I had to re-register with the above site in order to see the whole interview (which can be set to show up on one page instead of on eight pages). A key quote from the chief scientific officer Dr. Stuart Shanler clearly stood out and necessitated my writing this post:

“We also intend to initiate a Phase 2 open-label trial with ATI-50002 in AGA that is androgenetic alopecia in the first half of 2018.”

If this really does happen as scheduled, it would be superb news. However:

1. I am a bit confused about why their topical AGA product in their pipeline is not labeled as ATI-50002, even though the above quote implies as such. It is also worth remembering that just two months ago, Aclaris was granted several patents that implied that a number of different JAK inhibitors (“-tinibs”) could help male pattern hair loss sufferers. So in the end they might perhaps come out with several different topical products for AGA rather than just one.
2. It would be useful to know how they can skip Phase 1 clinical trials since their pipeline still shows those as not having even commenced as of today. As many have postulated in the past, since some of these topical JAK inhibitors have already been tested for other uses and by other entities such as Confluence and Columbia University, perhaps Phase 1 trials can be skipped or sped up?
3. They plan to conduct open-label trials, which can be a bit biased it seems.

In any event, unless the interview with Mr. Walker et al. was transcribed incorrectly, this is a big development and the first half 2018 Phase 2 trials goal comes right from the horse’s mouth.

H/T to Malcolm for pushing me to write this post today.

In 2014, I wrote a post on topical finasteride that has since became one of the most read posts on this blog ever. In hindsight, this is not surprising when considering the fact that I get emails about topical finasteride at least several times a month. People really want to ditch oral finasteride and switch to the topical version in order to reduce their chances of side effects.

Local compounding pharmacies in most cities will be able to make topical finasteride for you if you ask them. However, most of us are eagerly awaiting two thoroughly tested products that could be available for sale worldwide in the near future.

1. The first of these two is Spanish (previously Swiss) company Polichem’s P-3074 product, which I have covered on this blog several times in the past. European Phase 3 clinical trials for P-3074 are almost completed, while US Phase 3 clinical trials are expected to be completed in May 2018. Moreover, in 2016, an Italian study found the product (when applied to the scalp twice per day) to have superior results to oral finasteride. Several other favorable studies from prior years have also been covered on this blog in the past. P-3074 is vehicled in Hydroxypropyl-Chitosan.
2. The second of these two products is Canadian hair transplant clinic Hasson & Wong’s topical Finasteride, which is being manufactured in partnership with Italy’s Farmacia Parati. Without this partnership with a well known reputable pharmacy, I would have not put this product in the same category as Polichem’s product. The Hasson & Wong product is a liposomal formulation that has been modified via the attachment of silicone particles to the liposomes.

Perhaps a third company can develop nanoparticle based finasteride delivery in the future?

Dr. Hasson Provides an Update

Since 2014, Dr. Victor Hasson has provided this blog with regular updates about the status of his clinic’s topical finasteride (e.g., see here and here). While Canadian hair loss sufferers have been able to obtain the product from his clinic (and Europeans have been able to access the product via Farmacia Parati), people in other regions of the world including the US have had no such luck. There are a number of regulatory hurdles that Dr. Hasson has been trying to overcome in order to sell in the US.

Last week, Dr. Hasson called me out of the blue and mentioned some new developments, the gist of which are highlighted in the latest blog post on his website. I did not record his call, but below are some highlights that I recollect:

• Dr. Hasson will answer any intelligent reader questions if you post them in the comments to this post.
• Hasson & Wong will no longer prescribe oral finasteride and has entirely moved to topical finasteride as their latest blog post mentions.
• Since February 2017, they have been using their third generation of topical finasteride.
• Results from topical finasteride (based on analysis of around 800 patients in the Vancouver, BC area over the past several years) have been at least as good as those from oral finasteride.
• Side effects from topical finasteride have so far been nonexistent.
• The Hasson & Wong clinic will post a number of updates with patient photos related to this latest development on their website in the coming weeks.
• US sales should finally become a reality in the near future as Dr. Hasson has selected some pharmacies in the US that will compound his proprietary product.
• I asked about topical dutasteride (which interests me more than topical finasteride), and Dr. Hasson mentioned that this product is next in line. He talked about some scientific reason that makes the topical dutasteride molecule even more amenable to the scalp and scalp absorption than the topical finasteride molecule. I will ask him to elaborate in the comments to this post.
• Dr. Hasson mentioned that it has been difficult for him to get his hands on sufficient quantities of dutasteride and therefore their research in that area has lagged. Results from topical dutasteride are superior to those from topical finasteride, as would be expected from what we know about the oral versions of both drugs.

— Hair related updates at the bottom today.

— Last month, I decided to stop covering medical items of interest in my once a month “brief items of interest” posts. It was becoming a bit too much work to try to pick around 5-10 of the most interesting medical developments each month among the 100s out there.

Lo and behold comes today’s potentially blockbuster medical development regarding a subject matter that I have covered on this blog several times before: the world’s first ever head transplant (or more accurately, a “full body transplant” onto an existing “live” head). It seems like the world’s first successful head transplant ***albeit between two dead people*** has just taken place successfully in China under the supervision of Dr. Xiaoping Ren (with input from Dr. Sergio Canavero/aka Dr. Frankenstein), both of whom I have covered on this blog in the past. However, the procedure was undertaken between two cadavers (i.e., dead people) so is still not really a proper head transplant. Dr. Canavero claims that the transplantation of a live human’s head to a deceased human’s still working body (i.e., a true “full body” transplant) is now absolutely imminent. Lots of coverage about this in the media today and continued skepticism (but significantly less so than in the past). Is Dr. Canavero just in it for the fame or is he for real?

— Also, from the past two weeks, the first man to have his genes edited inside his body (US); and  successful skin epidermis replacement via gene modification (Germany). Both developments are major groundbreaking medical breakthroughs.

And in Hair Research Updates:

— Excellent effort by “Hellouser” in his hairlosstalk updates from the recent World Congress for Hair Research. An absolute must read.

— Dr. Rachita Dhurat is at it again. This time, her team makes the surprising conclusion that “A caffeine-based topical liquid should be considered as not inferior to minoxidil 5% solution in men with androgenetic alopecia“. There have been a number of studies over the years that suggest caffeine to beneficial towards hair growth. The stimulating effects of caffeine can reduce hair loss in some cases.

— Latest Aclaris patent grants covering baricitinib, decernotinib, ruxolitinib, and tofacitinib. It seems like all four can end up being used for treating androgenetic alopecia, especially tofacitinib.

— Reader “omg” posted a very interesting link today to a paper co-authored by renowned hair loss researchers Dr. Neil Saddick and Dr. Valerie Callender and others titled “New Insight Into the Pathophysiology of Hair Loss Trigger a Paradigm Shift in the Treatment Approach“. Lots of discussion in there about the role of inflammation in hair loss. The whole paper can be downloaded from the above link.

— Histogen and Dr. Gail Naughton covered in Allure Magazine. Key quote:

“The U.S. trials are planned to commence in 2018; we expect it to gain approval in Mexico first, perhaps in 2020, and then in the U.S. sometime after that”.

— UK male model Jeremy McConnell gets a hair transplant and beard transplant in Turkey.

Edit: It seems like this study was first published in June 2017 (see “omg”‘s comment in this post). Not sure why they now have this newer November 2017 publication date, nor why the global media only covered it so intensively this past week. Anyway, well done “omg” for being ahead of the curve.

Update: A Reddit thread on this went bonkers with over 2,500 comments.

Last week, several of my alerts led to South Korean websites that discussed new successful local research targeting the Wnt pathway to reverse hair loss. Since I very recently wrote a post concerning the Wnt pathway, I was planning to save this news for my next “brief items of interest” post.

However, first reader “Malcolm” emailed me and said that this development was worth its own post. Thereafter, in the past week, four different people commented about this news. And there are now many brief online news articles being published on this subject daily it seems. So I decided it was worth writing a second post related to Wnt in less than a month.

Targeting of CXXC5 by a Competing Peptide Stimulates Hair Regrowth

The actual paper was published in the prestigious Journal of Investigative Dermatology. South Korean scientists found that CXXC-type zinc finger protein 5 (CXXC5) is a negative regulator of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway. In fact, CXXC5 is upregulated in both thinning hair and arrector pili muscles in balding scalps.

The scientists managed to disrupt something termed as the “CXXC5-Dishevelled interaction” with a newly developed competitor peptide biomaterial called PTD-DBM. This resulted in activation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway and accelerated hair regrowth and wound-induced hair follicle neogenesis in mice. Yet more evidence on the benefits of wounding?

Interestingly, at the start of the above paper, they also mention the famous hair loss researcher Dr. Luis Garza and his recent paper (co-authored with Dr. Dangwon Kim) titled “The Negative Regulator CXXC5: Making WNT Look a Little Less Dishevelled“. Perhaps Dr. Garza is also collaborating on this research?

Valproic Acid and Hair

Also of interest, the scientists added valproic acid into the mix and found that it sped up hair growth in the mice. There has been some evidence on the benefits of valproic acid to scalp hair in the past. In fact a seminal work on the subject also came from South Korea in 2014, when scientists found that topical valproic acid increases hair counts in balding men. Apparently, valproic activates the activates the Wnt/β-catenin pathway (and inhibits glycogen synthase kinase 3β).

South Korean Sources

Below are some of the online South Korean sites that covered this story. This research must be significant enough to be covered in so many local sources. Moreover, while the research team was led by Dr. Kang-Yell Choi of Yonsei University, some of the below sources suggest involvement of the South Korean Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning in this work.

• The Korea Herald
• The Korea Times
• Korea Joongang Daily
• Yonhap News
• Business Korea

Future Drug Development

The UK’s Metro newspaper covered this story today. Key quote from Kang-Yell Choi, the main researcher involved:

“We have found a protein that controls the hair growth and developed a new substance that promotes hair regeneration by controlling the function of the protein. We expect that the newly developed substance will contribute to the development of a drug that not only treats hair loss but also regenerate damaged skin tissues”.

Mr. Kang-Yell Choi seems to have many patents related to the Wnt/β-catenin pathway to his name. He even has his own wikipedia entry.

For a long time, I have had a post on the back burner discussing how people with hair loss are more likely to suffer from a number of major health problems. For a blog that is generally highly optimistic, I was (in a twisted sense) looking forward to finally writing an entirely negative post so as to please the 1-2 percent of regular readers who only seem to want to see negativity and pessimism in everything. I do try to make everyone who visits this blog feel engaged, including those who seem to genuinely get their daily highs from bad news (or not sufficiently “good enough good news”) and subsequent venting.

Today’s big news of the day (see further below) finally pushed me into finalizing and publishing this pessimistic post. However, I ended up deciding to only focus on heart disease or else the post became way too lengthy. Perhaps I will discuss the other medical afflictions that correlate positively with male pattern hair loss in Christmas?

Being a smart aleck aside, the main reason for writing this post is to encourage the male readers of this blog to get a heart checkup and try to keep key risk factors such as blood pressure, LDL cholesterol, glucose levels and triglycerides in check.

Hair Loss, Prematurely Graying Hair and Heart Disease

Over the years there have been a number of studies from around the world (e.g., this one from Japan in 2013) that have concluded that men who suffer from heart disease are also much more likely to suffer from male pattern hair loss. Today comes news of yet another such study, this time examining 2,060 young men below the age of 40 in India (with the study undertaken by the European Society of Cardiology). 790 of the study participants suffered from coronary artery disease (CAD), also known as heart disease. BBC and various other major networks have covered this important development.

The researchers found that 50 percent of the men who suffered from CAD also suffered from prematurely graying hair, while a significantly less 30 percent of the men without graying hair had CAD. A similar correlation was found between those who suffered from male pattern hair loss versus those who did not and their respective heart disease rates (49 percent versus 27 percent). However, even more shocking:

“After adjusting for age and other cardiovascular risk factors, male-pattern baldness was associated with a 5.6 times greater risk of coronary artery disease and premature greying was associated with a 5.3 times greater risk”.

Heart Disease and Male Hormones

It seems like testosterone and/or dihydrotestosterone impact both male hair quality and male heart health negatively in those with the relevant bad genes (with inflammation also involved in both conditions). It does not seem like women have this problem, probably due to their producing far less amounts of male hormones (plus the heart protective effects of estrogen in their younger years).

I should, however, note that my 98 year old grandmother still has at least 75 percent of her scalp hair pigmented and absolutely no signs of heart disease. Perhaps when they do such a study on women, they might also find similar correlations, albeit not as strong as in men?

Earlier age hair loss and hair graying are a sign of overall rapid body ageing in some (but definitely far from all) people. In the latest BBC article that I linked to above, one of the scientists quoted suggests that DNA damage from ageing was a potential reason for early onset hair loss, early onset hair graying and early onset heart disease. Of course there are many people who go bald or grey very early and live to be over a 100 with no signs of heart disease…probably because they have certain genetic protections (e.g., high HDL “good” cholesterol levels) towards heart disease.

Celebrities with Premature Graying or Balding

Whenever I think of prematurely graying celebrities, the first name that comes to my mind is CNN’s Anderson Cooper, who went grey in his 30s, and entirely white in his 40s. He has mentioned in a number of interviews about how he misses his darker brown hair.

Mr. Cooper is currently 50 years old and seems extremely healthy. However, while researching this post, I found out that Mr. Cooper’s father died at 50…from heart disease. I wonder if the father also had grey hair at the time of his death? Hopefully Mr. Cooper is keeping his blood pressure, cholesterol, glucose and triglyceride levels in check.

Also of note, Patrick Stewart (a hero for many balding men), is still going strong at the age of 77 despite going bald at 19. Something he describes as traumatic in this interview.

It seems like a majority of hair loss sufferers have itchy scalps, especially in the balding inflamed regions of their heads. Moreover, this itching is often accompanied by significant dandruff episodes. For some, the dandruff comes and goes, while for others, it represents a daily problem. Dry indoor heating during winters and washing your hair too often can both further exacerbate the flaking. Note that dandruff is one particular manifestation of a condition called seborrheic dermatitis.

Over the years, I have had many episodes of dandruff and scalp itching and burning. Luckily, these are not too frequent, and I have found a number of shampoos to help when things get out of hand. I have tried almost all of the top rated anti-dandruff shampoos out there. A number of scientifically sound approaches are being used nowadays to target and control dandruff. Most of the below selected products have their own unique key ingredients with their own mechanisms of action. I try to alternate between several different dandruff shampoos every month. My reasons for doing this are so as to:

1. Not get side effects from the overuse of any one product with its key ingredient(s).
2. Avoid having my scalp becoming immune to the effects of certain ingredients due to overuse.

In addition to dandruff, many of the below shampoos also work to treat other conditions of scalp buildup and flaking such as eczema and psoriasis (although usually only when mild to moderate). Note that several of the products contains sulfates and other such potentially harmful ingredients that cause side effects in some people. Product effectiveness can also vary depending on whether you have a dry scalp versus oily scalp, whether you are male or female and your own propensity for allergic reactions to certain ingredients.

The 5 Best Anti-Dandruff Shampoos

Nizoral A-D

My favorite product with ample scientific backing behind its efficacy and numerous Amazon and Walmart reviews. The key active ingredient in this shampoo is Ketoconazole 1%, which has anti-fungal, anti-dandruff and anti-androgenic properties. The last of these aids scalp hair growth according to a number of studies. See my post on Nizoral for much more details and discussion of the science behind this product. Nizoral comes in a fairly small bottle, but still lasts for many months with twice a week usage. I would not recommend more frequent usage than that or else you can exacerbate scalp dryness and end up with brittle hair quality and texture. You can also get Nizoral 2% medicated shampoo with a prescription.

Neutrogena T/Gel

The key active ingredient in this popular dermatologist recommended product is 2% coal tar extract. The instructions suggest just once a week usage to be ideal in combating dandruff, seborrheic dermatitis as well as psoriasis. The coal tar gives this product an unusual color and keratolytic properties that can smoothen and improve scalp skin. Some users do not like the smell of this shampoo and also complain about dyed hair color fading. Note that Neutrogena T/Sal is a different product made by the same company, but is also highly rated and contains salicylic acid 3%.

Head & Shoulders Clinical Strength

Over the years, Head & Shoulders has probably produced more varieties of shampoos to target dandruff than any other company out there. Their most popular product for targeting scalp flakes is this clinical strength shampoo. The key active ingredient in it is selenium sulfide 1%, which reduces scalp fungus and bacteria. You can also find a number of other highly rated and reviewed Head & Shoulders dandruff shampoos on Amazon.

JASON Natural

Although not as well known as the above three listed products, this is a unique pH balanced largely natural product. It contains colloidal sulfur 2% and salicylic acid 2% as the two main active ingredients to tackle dandruff and seborrheic dermatitis. Additional ingredients that improve scalp health include aloe vera, apple cider vinegar, jojoba oil, methylsulfonylmethane (MSM), olive oil, rosemary oil, seaweed extract, tea tree oil and vitamin E.

Head & Shoulders Classic Clean

Head & Shoulders came out with a pyrithione zinc based shampoo all the way back in 1961. To this day, the company still makes anti-dandruff shampoos that are based on this original active ingredient, in a zinc pyrithione 1% formulation. This key ingredient helps inhibit scalp yeast and fungus growth.

Honorary Mentions

• A number of readers have mentioned the highly rated Paul Mitchell Tea Tree Special Shampoo. I have heard about this product a lot over the years, and might even have tried it some years ago. You can often purchase it at local hairdressers and beauty salons for a discount. Besides tea tree oil, the product also contains peppermint and lavender according to the manufacturer’s website. Other ingredients are not listed.

Your Dandruff Shampoo Experiences

Do you have an itchy scalp and dandruff related problems? What shampoos have worked best for you over the years without drying out your hair (both men and women can respond)? Have you tried any natural and herbal products and seen a reduction in flaking and dryness? Also do make sure to read my reviews on the best hair loss shampoos out there.

Way too many developments in the past month, at least half of which probably deserved their own post.

Wounding, Interleukin-1 (IL-1) and γδ T-cells

At the end of 2013. I first discussed Dr. Krzysztof Kobielak and Dr. Eve Kandyba from USC in relation to their work on how the Wnt7 gene activates hair growth. Now, both scientists are back in the news and have collaborated with researchers from UC San Diego and India and published a paper titled: “Stimulation of hair follicle stem cell proliferation through an IL-1 dependent activation of γδT-cells“. Interestingly, one of the three most important word used throughout the paper (“wounding” or “wound”) is missing from that title, although not from the complementing photo (see red text in the image further below).

The scientists have found that wounding triggers interleukin-1 (IL-1), which in turn activates certain immune cells (called γδT-cells or gamma delta cells). These immune cells then awaken resting stem cells in the hair follicle (so that they can then “multiply and travel to the wound site to repair the injury”). For our purposes, the hair follicle stem cell activation is more important than any kind of wound repair. Hair is obviously more important than scar repair or infection prevention:-)

Commentator “Omg” who has posted some great material in recent weeks (including the above — thanks!) wrote that this finding is the biggest discovery of the past decade (I am not so sure). Note that the authors of this latest work are not affiliated with Follica (the widely discussed company that is developing a “wounding+favorable compound injection” related procedure to regrow hair); nor are they affiliated with Dr. Rachita Dhurat, who has published several groundbreaking papers related to wounding and hair growth. Makes this discovery from a different group all the more exciting, and further validates the potential of wounding led hair regrowth.

Nanogel Encapsulated Dermal Papilla 3D Spheroids and Hair Follicle Regeneration

In 2015 I interviewed Dr. Malcolm Xing from Canada. In 2016, I discussed the same doctor’s new findings related to a novel improved “hanging drop” 3D cell culturing technique for the purpose of hair growth. Dr. Xing has constantly been trying to improve upon the renowned Dr. Colin Jahoda’s work.

This month, Dr. Xing and a team from China have published a new paper titled “Bottom-up Nanoencapsulation from Single Cells to Tunable and Scalable Cellular Spheroids for Hair Follicle Regeneration“. I am not motivated enough to try to make the sci-hub site work (I get mixed luck with that) to gain free access to this whole paper, since I do not want to then spend hours trying to understand the complicated science behind this research. I am, however, in no doubt whatsoever that any new development related to 3D spheroids and hair is of utmost importance and warrants coverage.

More Good News from Aclaris

In November, I discovered an interview in which Aclaris Therapeutics’ chief scientific officer mentioned that in the  first half of 2018, Aclaris planned to commence phase 2 trials to treat androgenetic alopecia (male pattern hair loss) with topical JAK inhibitors. This was a huge development, since we are used to ALL companies in the hair loss world postponing or delaying clinical trials. In contrast, Aclaris is doing the opposite and moving to phase 2 trials without even having done phase 1 trials! They probably got to skip phase 1 trials because they have tested the same JAK inhibitors (including oral and topical) for other conditions.

Several weeks after I posted the above pleasing development, Aclaris announced at an investor conference that they would start the above trials at the end of the first quarter of next year (i.e, end of March 2018). Yet again they surprise us with their speed, and do not want to wait will June 2018. The announcement can be accessed by going to their website and finding their latest investor conference presentations (often available in both audio and slide formats). Thanks to “Royaume” who listened to the whole audio for us (albeit misinterpreted its implication :-)). Commentator “Malcolm” even felt like I should have devoted a whole post to this news, but I did not want to do so less than a month after my prior post on Aclaris. Moreover, past experiences make me think that Aclaris will delay its trial commencement target dates (like all others who came before it seem to do), although I hope I am wrong.

And as if this was not enough, earlier today it was announced that Aclaris has received its first ever product approval by the FDA for the former’s ESKATA hydrogen peroxide topical solution (to treatment raised seborrheic keratoses). Funnily enough, Aclaris stock declined today despite this widely publicized good news. Thank goodness I never pursued my dream of part-time day trading.

Follicum also Plans Phase 2 Trials in Early 2018

Even though Follicum has been present in the hair loss world well before Aclaris even commenced operations, the former has not moved along as fast as the latter. However, recently Follicum announced that they were planning to start phase 2 trials for their FOL-005 product in early 2018 in Germany.

Replicel CEO Update

Replicel’s CEO was interviewed by “Investing News” towards the end of last month. Key quote:

“There’s a possibility… that [our] hair products could have an early launch in Japan. Our partner Shiseido is funding a clinical trial in Japan that’s expected to release clinical data next year. It’s entirely up to Shiseido what they do in regards to this product. There’s certainly a possibility that they could decide if the data is positive, to launch the product in Japan and that would trigger… milestone payments and sales royalty revenue”.

Other Items of Interest

— I saw a number of comments and received several e-mails regarding the Brotzu lotion. It seems like they updated their EU patent and there are Italian hair loss forum rumors that the product is coming out in 2018. I might update with better info, but for the time being it seems like a lot of speculation going on.

— A great thread with before and after photos on Reddit about the power of  the “Big 3” treatment of Finasteride plus Minoxidil plus Nizoral when effective.

— PolatiyTE starts using its SkinTE product on humans. No info yet on potential hair growth effects on the scalp, but still great to see usage in humans rather than mice so early in the process. Key quote:

“We are confident and believe that SkinTE will replicate its preclinical success and help patients regenerate their own full-thickness, hair-bearing skin”.

I have covered Swedish company Follicum a number of times in the past on this blog, with my first post about the company going back almost three years. You can click on the company name (or product name) that is right above the title of this post to read all my past posts about Follicum. They are working on an interesting modified human protein based product called FOL-005, which can both reduce hair growth (great for those with excessive body hair) and increase hair growth (great for those with less scalp hair).

After I published the recent news about Follicum’s phase 2 trials in my last post, a representative from the company reached out to me several days ago and provided the excellent below summary of where the company currently stands:

FOL-005 for stimulation of hair growth

Follicum has, in collaboration with international R & D partners e.g. Charité Hospital, Berlin, Germany, evaluated FOL-005 (a peptide) in different models for regulation of hair growth – both in-vitro and on humans. Our development process may briefly be described as follows:

• Trials on mice (2012).
• Trials on human tissue in-vitro (2013).
• Trials on human tissue transplanted on mice (2015).
• Toxicity trials, three months (2016).
• Clinical phase I/IIa trial on humans (2016/2017).
• Development of a topical formulation for FOL-005 (2017/2018).
• Beginning of 2018 Follicum will start a clinical trial (phase IIa) in Alopecia on scalp. This time including 60 alopecia patients. The study will read out during end 2018.

Preparing for further clinical trials of FOL-005, Follicum conducted two separate three month toxicity trials during 2016. Both trials showed FOL-005 to be safe for further administration.

During the period from late 2016 to early 2017 the first clinical trial was carried out on healthy humans at the Charité Hospital of Berlin. The main objective of the trial was to confirm the safety of the drug, FOL-005, and to measure effect and response. The results showed, first of all, that the treatment was safe while also showing a considerable increase in hair growth. In all, 76% of the trial participants with the second lowest dose of FOL-005 during the trial showed increased growth. At this specific dose, the growth was stimulated roughly 8% compared to before treatment. The increase is statistically verified (p=0,0038). Please note that this was a short 3 month trial on thigh and that the next study will be on 60 Alopecia patients on scalp.

We are in parallel with the clinical program developing three different topical formulations from which we will select the one that is most attractive during Spring 2018 to be used in phase IIb clinical trials 2019. The prototype formulations are the following:

1. Powder formulation – FOL-005 in emulsion of lipid-based suspension.
2. Cream – nanoparticles of FOL-005 in lipid-based suspension.
3. Gel – FOL-005 incorporated in polymer nanoparticles.

Their year-end summary is here. Note that the company’s CEO Dr. Jan Alenfall has a number of mostly Swedish videos on youtube (although with English presentation slides in some). One useful recent one is embedded below:

One of the most useful services that Google provides is something called “Google Alerts“. I am amazed at how many people still do not know about this feature even though it has been out since 2003. It has helped me tremendously in the past, both in my work-life for research purposes as well as in my personal life (e.g., getting notified once a week about electric car lease deal related news).

Basically, anytime you want to find out if a particular subject matter or phrase that you are interested in was recently mentioned on the internet (whether as a news story, blog post, video, public relations announcement, discussion board post and more), google alerts will notify you via e-mail if you request as such.

I have set up hair and hair loss research related keyword and keyword phrase google alerts ever since I first started this blog. Because the list has now become way too large, I have started moving many of my daily alerts to weekly alerts. I have even started removing some keyword alerts entirely if I have not seen anything of major interest related to them during the past year.

Hair Loss Cure Related Google Alerts for 2018 and Beyond

So to end 2017, I thought it would be a good idea to encourage readers who have used Google Alerts in the past (or who plan to do so in the future) to add “hair” related terms to their list for 2018. It will also help me whenever I miss something for rare keywords that readers might have included in their alerts. If some readers set daily alerts for subjects that I might have only set weekly alerts for in 2018, it would also be of benefit to us all.

Perhaps of even more importance and interest, you can play around with regional settings as well as language settings while setting your alerts. I am curious to see what you find in your particular region that differs from my region of the United States of America (English language only setting for me). News from China and Japan especially interests me, although the Baidu search engine dominates Google in China.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

If you decide to participate in this experiment:

Make sure that the “Show Options” feature to the right of the “Create Alerts” blue button box is expanded before setting your Google Alerts via the link I posted earlier. You might have to start typing in the search box first before the feature shows up.

Also:

• Which hair loss related keywords or keyword phrases are you most interested in all the time (every year) and want to read about on a daily basis whenever mentioned on the internet? In my case, some examples would be “Dutasteride hair”, “Follica” and “Takashi Tsuji”. I have set up daily alerts on all those subjects.
• Which hair loss related terms are you most interested in during the year 2018? Post in the comments if you care to share. Some of my interests for 2018 include companies and subject matters that are not exactly in the hair field, but still related (e.g., “PolarityTE”, “head transplant”, “robotic hair transplants” and so on).
• Note that I have never set up any “as-it-happens” alerts, which seems like overkill and way too much of a distraction for me. If you are so inclined, experiment with such real-time notifications.
• Also note that you can select to be alerted with “only the best results” instead of “all results” if you want to reduce the quantity of material that you need to weed through.