Having an incessant itch in the ear that no amount of scratching can shake off can take a real toll on you. It keeps you from concentrating on anything else, sucks the fun out of everything, and makes you want to rip your ears off. Sounds a bit extreme for a little harmless itch in […]
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Harlan, was an active and happy toddler when his world changed forever. At just two-years-old, Harlan was diagnosed with a rare brain cancer for which there was no cure.
With no new treatments in over 20 years, Harlan bravely endured standard therapies – radiation, chemotherapy and brain surgery. Yet even in pain, his infectious giggle and big smile captured the hearts of everyone he met.
For his family, daily life revolved around Harlan’s cancer and holding him tightly as he courageously fought his battle for nearly two years. And then, just before his 4th birthday, Harlan lost his fight. Harlan had spent half of his little life battling cancer.
Sadly, we know Harlan was not alone. Each day, approximately 43 kids are diagnosed with cancer and 43 families’ lives are turned upside down as they embark on a new life affected by this terrible disease.
Harlan’s family vowed to do everything in their power to change this outcome for other kids, to eliminate the pain of cancer and bring hope to families affected by it. They became involved with CureSearch and rally annually to raise funds to support childhood cancer research.
Join Harlan’s family and CureSearch to help make this a season of hope for every child and family experiencing a heartbreaking cancer diagnosis. Give for kids like Harlan, and for the hope that together we WILL change the future by advancing new, less-toxic childhood cancer treatments and cures. Make your end of year contribution today.
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Cigarette smoking is injurious to health! We’ve all heard that before, but what about chewing tobacco? Chewing smokeless tobacco products, although less talked about, is just as bad as smoking – if not more. Rather than being inhaled, smokeless tobacco is consumed orally and has been in use for as long as other forms of […]
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At CureSearch for Children’s Cancer, this holiday season is about giving hope – the hope that every childhood cancer patient can live the long, healthy life he or she deserves. That’s why we’re sharing three ways you can help give hope to kids with cancer including:
Without you, our dedicated CureSearch community, we couldn’t provide the necessary funding for research that propels new treatments and cures to the children and families who need them most.
Get involved or donate today and give hope to every child fighting cancer.
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The post Three ways to give holiday hope to kids with cancer appeared first on CureSearch for Children's Cancer.
Back in 2003 a couple of European researchers, Kevin McElwee PhD and Rolf Hoffman MD, published the results of their work studying the cell biology of the hair follicle. Since then they have grown a lean business that leads development through a network of established partners. That lean structure leaves them free to focus their energies on ongoing research, the quality of that research has led them into partnership with some serious players around the world but particularly in Asia, where their relationship with Shiseido, signed in 2013, is of special interest to us… with its focus on a new hair loss treatment.
While many of the companies we have been looking at are young biotechs that you are unlikely to have heard of, unless like us you spend ridiculous amounts of time trawling newsfeeds for anything hair loss related. Shiseido is different. For a start they were founded in 1872, which makes them by some distance the oldest company on our list. While they are more readily associated with being a skincare company, they have obviously recognized the merging of skincare and hair loss treatments through the development of several topical approaches to the problem. The 2013 deal with RepliCel saw Shiseido sign an exclusive license, covering the whole of the Asian market, to work on RepliCel’s product RCH-01. Shiseido is carrying out it’s own, separate work on taking the treatment through trial.
RCH-01 is described as an autologous cell therapy making use of dermal sheath “cup cells.” Follicles are taken from the patient using a small punch biopsy, from the back of the scalp where, as transplant surgeons have taught us for decades, the hair is immune from the ravages of hair loss. The cup cells are first separated from the follicle and then replicated in the lab. The plan is to take the genetic benefits of that immunity and bring those traits to existing follicles in the region affected by hair loss.
Though there are undoubtedly some huge technical challenges to bringing this to market we are encouraged, once again, by the gravity of the firms involved. RepliCel has built an interesting business based purely on really smart research results… testified to by the quality of partner they have acquired. The fact that the list of partners includes Shiseido gives further weight to the story, one that we hope runs and runs. Again, the delivery method suggests that you will find yourself in a surgical suite being treated by a surgeon.., so the cost will surely be a block for many potential clients. But the cost has a way of coming down over time and we will continue to monitor their progress closely.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss situation with one of our team of friendly experts, simply complete the contact form on this page or click here to find your nearest clinic.
Kyocera might, at first glance, seem an unlikely candidate to deliver a hair loss cure. The company was founded in Japan in 1959 as a specialist in fine ceramics and steadily built the business, expanding to become an international player with offices in the USA and Germany. By 1972 they were using their skills around ceramics to enter the brave new world of information technology, delivering multi-layered ceramic packages for large-scale integrated circuits. The early eighties saw a series of mergers with electronics companies, it would set the tone for the next decade or more as the business used acquisitions to enter many new markets where they saw an opportunity to use their R&D abilities to carve out market share.
The 3M Yen that it required to set the company up, back in 1959, is now dwarfed by annual revenues today in excess of 1.5 trillion Yen. They are a major player in more industries and market sectors than you could shake a stick at. Fortunately, for hair loss sufferers the world over, on Kyocera’s to-do list is to produce a hair loss treatment based on some breathtakingly twenty-first-century science.
Kyocera has teamed up with two very young, very smart Japanese biotechs. One is Organ Technologies, a small research company that has its focus on regenerative medicine… they have taken out patents on reproduced teeth… which you would think might make sprouting some new hair a relatively simple task. The second is an outfit called Riken Center for Developmental Biology, like Organ Technologies they are focussed on regenerative medicine and have a phenomenal catalog of innovation behind them.
The three, Kyocera, Riken and Organ Technologies, have been collaborating on some stem cell research aimed at a hair loss cure… or at the very least to make hair transplants a thing of the past. The limitations of transplants are well-known, harvest scars chief among them. But even if you find your way, with deep enough pockets, to a good surgeon, they are only able to relocate a limited number of follicles… and they will take 6 months to “settle” before you can judge the success of the treatment. Even then there are issues with size and orientation, where the relocated hairs are mature and taken from the back of the head they look substantially different from the fine hairs normally seen at the hairline. In addition, the original orientation of the follicle may be lost in relocation so that they grow out in odd directions, further adding to the slightly wrong finish.
We know, it was a new word on us when we first saw it in one of their press releases, but that is the nature of groundbreaking medicine… the need to create new words for never seen before products. In this case the product is arrived at by taking follicles from the patients own head. Just a few though. These follicles have their stem cells isolated which are then multiplied in the lab. These cells are combined in what they describe as a 3D environment before being “packaged” ready for delivery back into the same patient’s scalp… via a series of injections.
This work is at the very early, pre-clinical, stage. But the quality of the achievements already made by both Riken and Organ, combined with the smarts and financial muscle of Kyocera should give everyone cause for hope that something meaningful will come out of it. Their prognosis is that the treatment will be able to deliver impressive density over a similar timescale to a modern FUT transplant, though it is likely to be the job of a surgeon to administer the injections suggesting cost will be a barrier for many. At least in its early years. We will continue to watch their progress and report back on any momentum.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss situation with one of our team of friendly experts, simply complete the contact form on this page or click here to find your nearest clinic.
Not to be confused with the constellation that appears in the northern sky and is named after a Greek queen who boasted of her unrivaled beauty. That is Cassiopeia, completely different. This is a biotech company, trading on the Swiss exchange where they went public in 2015, with its focus on developing topical treatments for skin diseases, to which they recently added hair loss to their target list.
Cassiopea has an impressive and cosmopolitan group of individuals at its helm, people with a great deal of experience in the worlds of pharmaceutical and research. Board member Dr. Jan De Vries PhD (immunology), in particular, has an eye-catching CV. This multi-award winning former head of Novartis Autoimmunity has written over 200 papers, had 20 patents granted and bought 15 compounds to clinical trials.
For the last couple of years, the team at Cassiopea have been developing a hair loss treatment they call Breezula. Like everything else they have in development, Breezula is a topical treatment. It works, or at least the idea behind the science on it working, is that it can interfere with the negative effects of the dreaded DHT and androgen receptors by blocking that interaction.
Cassiopea announced earlier this year that their Phase II dose-ranging trial results were “very positive.” Which in plain English means that they were able to evidence an improvement but also to identify the optimum dosage for maximum benefit. These results will be the platform, they hope, for a successful transition to the next phase of trials and ultimately to a tube of ointment on the pharmacy shelf.
It is a mix of those impressive individuals and the pure common sense in their approach that gives us some hope for Cassiopea. As a topical treatment, it will not be subject to the rigors of clinical testing that we rightly expect for anything to be taken internally… simply because it avoids so many of the interactions by being topical. We will continue to watch their progress and hope that great things can be achieved by Breezula.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss situation with one of our team of friendly experts, simply complete the contact form on this page or click here to find your nearest clinic.
(www.heraldonline.com) Hikers will lace up their boots to trek 12 miles Nov. 17 at Baxter Village Trail in Fort Mill to honor and remember local children affected by childhood cancer. It touches particularly close to home for one York County family.
“Our main concern is knowing that childhood cancer research is vastly and consistently underfunded,” said Jonathan Sullins. “And our goal is to raise as much as awareness and money for that and to help out families.”
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Not unlike the other companies we have visited during this tour, Aclaris describe themselves in twenty-first-century terms. In fact, it would be closer to the truth to say they drive the development of innovative solutions to underserved skin conditions.
Founded in 2012 their early work was on finding an original treatment for seborrheic keratoses, a program was started in 2013. Fast forward to 2016, by when Aclaris had also begun a clinical program for the use of that seborrheic keratosis treatment on common warts, and they took an important step in our direction…
In 2016, Aclaris bought intellectual property from Colombia University where a team had been working on Janus Kinane (JAK) inhibitors. These JAK inhibitors play an important role in the development of alopecia so the acquisition effectively introduced Aclaris as a new, and important player, in the world of hair loss.
A year later saw two more important developments for the business. First, because it is our list, was the initiation of two clinical programs for a topical JAK inhibitor (ATI-502 JAK1/JAK3) – one was looking at alopecia areata and the other at vitiligo. The other significant moment in the Aclaris year last year was the purchase of Confluence Discovery Technologies Inc… who now operate as a wholly owned subsidiary. They are a full-service drug discovery and early developmental contract research organization. Which strikes us a very neat fit.
This year came the news that they were broadening their horizons and elevating their ambitions for their topical JAK inhibitor, with the implication that it turns out to be more potent than might have been thought. There is now a clinical program based on using it as a treatment for androgenetic alopecia… that awful version of baldness generally known as “typical.” The sort that comes to you through your genes and has proved historically almost impossible to reverse.
A new addition to the suite of products available to challenge hair loss would be most welcome. The topical nature of the Aclaris offering means that it will take considerably less time to come to market that some of the other more exotic treatments we have looked at in this series.
Aclaris themselves seem to go from strength to strength and are worth in the region of $0.5B today… Which we hope will also add some impetus to the development of their treatment. We will certainly report progress here.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss situation with one of our team of friendly experts, simply complete the contact form on this page or click here to find your nearest clinic.
We all are familiar with the term “cough.” Coughing is perhaps one of the most common health problems that frequently affects both children and adults. A cough is basically a voluntary or involuntary act, which helps your breathing passage and throat get rid of foreign particles, mucus, irritants, microbes, etc. It involves rapid air expulsion […]
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Since they were founded, in 2007, this San Diego based startup has raised nearly $50M over five rounds of funding, enough to suggest that some deep-pocketed people have done due diligence and thought them worthy of significant investment. Although we should always bear in mind the scale of the market for any sort of winner in this race.
Histogen’s proposition is based on some smart patents involving the production of multipotent stem cells in the lab, from regular connective tissue rather than embryos. The technology is the basis for two principal areas of research, with one aimed at creating a hair loss treatment and the other at producing an insoluble extracellular matrix – which has potential in wound healing and cancer care.
Since registering their first patent in 2012, which covered the Company’s new method for growing cells, they have added another 7 US patents along with 40 issued foreign patents and a further 30 active applications.
They have already gone to market, in partnership with Allergan, on a skin rejuvenation product available through dermatologists… but that is low hanging fruit compared to an injectable hair loss treatment. Any injectable treatment needs to pass a far more stringent set of medical trials than any cream.
So far they have conducted a couple of small studies on an earlier version of their compound, HSC660, which showed a “marked improvement” in terminal hair count.
The company has been encouraged by these results, and those of another small study which showed, they tell us on their website, excellent efficacy for women. Plans are for a Phase 1 Clinical Study in the US using the latest version of their compound.
The fact that the research is based on a patent which sees them capable of producing their own supply of pluripotent stem cells is exciting. They have also proven adept at generating cash to fund their research, with any luck they will also be generating some income through their skincare product. That will only help compress the time to market for their hair loss treatment, which if it successfully negotiates the various clinical hurdles must still be some 3 years away at least.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss situation with one of our team of friendly experts, simply complete the contact form on this page or click here to find your nearest clinic.
Some of the companies we are looking at in this series are young, very young. Others have been around a few years and struggle through the stages of clinical study through a lack of funding. Samumed are different. Since they began work in 2008, they have developed several stem cell research projects with each aimed at a different, underserved, market all in the age-related disease arena. The list of ailments they are aiming to remedy is impressive, it includes some of the most widespread and damaging illnesses including Alzheimer’s Disease and Osteoarthritis. In fact, they have no less than eight compounds in development at various stages.
Their compound SM04554 reached the end of its Phase 2 clinical trials earlier this year, with results that were solid rather than impressive. Along with their Osteoarthritis treatment it is at the most advanced stage of development. The early phases of these clinical trials have to demonstrate efficacy, usually in mice. Phase 2 is where the developer aims to prove safety along with efficacy. So we are currently to hear more detail on the Phase 3 clinical trials that they pretty much immediately moved on to. Signs are good and there seems every reason to be optimistic. Lessons are learned about dosage and other factors during Phase 1, which inform the team ahead of Phase 2 and hopefully lead to improvements… the same is true of lessons learned during Phase 2 when it comes to those Phase 3 trials.
We have followed the work of Samumed for years. They have a super smart executive team and some seriously exciting products in development. You don’t even have to take our word for it. The fact is that they started out well-funded, but success has seen them raise an incredible $650M in equity over their time… including an impressive $438M Series A (when a private company invites external funding for the first time) in August. That level of funding is not easy to attract for any business at any time, it certainly testifies to the credibility of Samumed. We can only hope it translates into meaningful treatments for them, any one of their eight compounds holds the promise of improving the lives of millions of sufferers.
We should finish with a reality check, despite its intended use as a topical application those Phase 3 trials are still extensive. Do not expect, even with Samumed’s deep pockets, anything approaching a marketable product this side of 2022. Even then, the likelihood is that this will be a replacement for minoxidil… something that might halt your hair loss progressing and, with luck, add somewhere around 10% to the number of follicles.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss situation with one of our team of friendly experts, simply complete the contact form on this page or click here to find your nearest clinic.
The origins of Follicum started out in conducting research into arteriosclerosis, they noticed an increase in hair growth in the laboratory mice and chose to pursue the importance of that outcome. They had been using a modified human protein, osteopontin, and worked to expand their understanding of how human proteins might impact on our ability to grow, or regrow, hair.
Their work resulted in a specific peptide, FOL-005, being taken to trial as their favoured candidate. They have since developed FOL-005. Both are protein-based but it is FOL-005 that is further down the path towards becoming a product on the shelves. News from a study conducted in Germany, which injected volunteers to the study with the drug, is that it has been declared as well-tolerated… positive news for the drug’s development since it means they are working on a treatment that has been declared safe. Efficacy results, at first glance, might be slightly less encouraging. Their website tells us that the study was evaluating the improvement based on the effect versus baseline, so individual changes and not versus the placebo. Nevertheless, they declared an improvement of 7 hairs per square centimetre, The study also showed “a clear increase” of the number of hair follicles in the growth phase, a result that improved with a larger dosage.
It is important to note that these results were for a first phase 11A study, essentially performed to test a drug’s safety and to evidence some therapeutic effect. The results are enough to encourage the team to start developing a topical version of the treatment, one which would have to undergo significantly fewer legislative hurdles and so lead to a product sooner rather than later… though Follicum admit they are still seeking a commercial partner they are understandably optimistic that this set of results will drive that conversation.
More studies are planned, with increased dosage and treatment rates, to try and improve on the existing set of results. Lower doses were shown to have no effect and a wide variety of results were seen even with larger doses.
Follicum was founded in 2011 with just $650,000 if seed capital. Understandable then that their pace of progress is limited by that lack of finance. Great to read that these results are encouraging their efforts and we wish them well… while recognising that 7 hairs per sq cm are nothing to get too excited about then you really need around 250. But let us not underestimate the value of any research that has managed to grow even one new hair… they may very well be onto something. We will continue to watch them closely.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss situation with one of our team of friendly experts, simply complete the contact form on this page or click here to find your nearest clinic.
High blood pressure is a silent killer! According to the Merck Manual, high blood pressure, medically known as hypertension, is the sustained elevation of resting systolic blood pressure (≥ 130 mm Hg), diastolic blood pressure (≥ 80 mm Hg), or both.[1] This can lead to several health problems, including heart disease. High blood pressure is […]
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We will see, later in our search, businesses that have been developed with less cash but Follica are one of the lower funded outfits on the hunt for the cure to hair loss. To date, since they were founded in 2005, Follica has raised $24.1M and none at all since 2010. We are taking the benevolent view that this lack of cash-raising is due to some commercial success with products already on the market. Today, they are part of a larger group operating under the PureTech Health banner, PureTech themselves are a pioneering pharma group developing therapeutics based on the biology interactions between the brain, the gut and the immune system.
Their website opens with a quote from the firm’s scientific co-founder, Dr. George Cotsarelis, Chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. “The dogma was that you were born with the total number of follicles that you were ever going to have. their loss was considered permanent. Now we know it is now.”
It is an ambitious statement, designed to turn the head of any hair loss sufferer but what is that claim based on? Well, Follica is using proprietary technology from the University of Pennsylvania which is based on using stem cells to trigger new growth. The public appetite for stem cell applications is seemingly limitless, as is the optimism for their potential to cure pretty much anything. The team at Follica have a process which starts with “disruption” of the scalp, which sounds painful and quite probably is. But it is a necessary evil since the cure lies in manipulating how the body reacts to that disruption. Follica tell us that cells migrate to the site of the disruption to make repairs and that on arrival they need to make a decision on whether to become skin cells or hair cells. They claim that at this point it is possible to push those cells towards deciding to become hair, we are told on their site “There is a window of opportunity in which we can potentially push them to chose the latter, and we believe there are multiple biological pathways to target to enhance this outcome.”
Because the first step in the process is that painful sounding skin disruption, which creates the essential damage that triggers the arrival of the stem cells, the first appointment is with a trained medical professional. From there you switch to using a device at home which delivers “a range of compounds” on a daily basis. There is a smartphone app which makes sure you stay on plan, and reminds you when to order fresh compounds.
Follica is certainly working in an interesting area. The implications of the gut on our wider health are only beginning to be understood, along with our ability to manipulate stem cells. Like others in the series, Follica is operating in an area that might well hold the key… we will continue to watch their progress closely to see how their product improves.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss situation with one of our team of friendly experts, simply complete our contact form on this page or click here to find your nearest clinic.
Over a series of articles, we will bring you right up to date on the progress of some of the most exciting and ambitious projects in the hair loss sector. In recent times we have seen come to market of just a handful of genuinely original contributions to men and women sufferers. Laser caps and cooling caps address very different problems but with the same aim, to help the patient hold on to hair against the odds. On the medical front, we have seen PRP take it’s place, with its blend of new science and what seems like a common sense approach. The results on all these are not necessarily what we, as sufferers have in mind when we imagine a cure… that still involves sprouting fantastic, Gerard Depardieu style locks.
When we ask the question, how far off is that stellar and simple cure, we will look at efforts of the latest research by teams at the bleeding edge. We hope that by doing so, we will build a picture of our current level of understanding, which seems to be improving at an ever accelerating rate, and, just maybe, how much longer we might have to wait.
Today, in our first of this series, we will take a look at the work of Rivertown Therapeutics Inc. The youngest of all the companies we will be looking at, Rivertown has a unique approach which involves a topical treatment… as a direct consequence of which they can accelerate development time by avoiding some of the more demanding regulations around medications designed to be swallowed or injected.
Only founded three years ago, in 2015, by neurologist and scientist David Weinstein MD, Rivertown was established to bring to market a specific product. We like Dr. Weinstein, unfazed by his own hair loss he took the opportunity to try out a molecule he had developed for peripheral nerve regeneration. He had seen it grow unexpected hair on mice in what was called, at the time, a side effect as they explored the properties of the molecule.
Unfortunately, for Dr. Weinstein, the molecule did nothing for his hair loss. Undeterred, he went on to create a brand new molecule, RT1640… which he has further developed into a topical treatment.
Dr. Weinstein’s idea was to combine his existing molecule with some additional ones to produce a combination with what he claims is a robust approach to the problem.
Described as “involving “a complex set of interactions that require the recruitment of stem cells, their differentiation and incorporation into the growing hair shaft. Along with melanin and growth-factors this triple whammy on hair loss can be enough, claims the Dr., to not only regrow hair as if that isn’t enough but that it will grow pre-grey hair in your original colour.
It’s a great place to start, Rivertown embodies the bold, lone scientist with an idea… and who would bet against the cure being found by just such a person.
The prediction for RT1640 is to become both a scalp lotion for hair loss and a cream for use on overplucked eyebrows.
We will certainly keep a close eye on the current and planned trials for Dr. Weinstein’s super-smart sounding molecule.
If you would like to discuss your hair loss treatment with one of our team of friendly experts simply complete the contact form on this page, or click here to find your nearest clinic.
