Monthly Archives: April 2015

Plucking, Cheng-Ming Chuong, Quorum Sensing, University of Southern California

Quorum Sensing: Hair Plucking to Grow New Hair

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Yet again (see my 2013 blog post), scientists from the University of Southern California (USC) surprised us this week  by publishing a groundbreaking study related to hair. This one was on how strategic plucking induces new hair growth — in mice :-( The work was led by Dr. Cheng-Ming Chuong and published in the prestigious Cell magazine, giving it significant credibility. You can see the entire paper on Dr. Chuong’s website.

Hair Plucking and Quorum Sensing

I am not sure why such a simple experiment has not yet been attempted on humans. I was not too motivated to write this post several days ago when the news first came out and I read the word “mouse” in there. In fact I have not even bothered to read most of the pages in hair loss forum threads related to this news yet.

Here are some links to this important story: link1 from the USC website; link 2 from the LA times where they discuss macrophages; and link 3 from BBC where they mention a potential cream or injection for this. The results varied significantly depending on the number of follicles plucked and the area from which they were plucked.

When done correctly, new hair even grew outside the plucked area. This type of phenomenon is seen in many areas of biology and is termed as “Quorum Sensing“.  The luckiest mouse had 200 hairs plucked and grew back 1,300 hairs. A great summary of growing hair via plucking can be found here.

One of the quotes from the first link in the last paragraph was interesting:

As a dermatologist, Chen knew that hair follicle injury affects its adjacent environment, and the Chuong lab had already established that this environment in turn can influence hair regeneration.

I wonder if this result from plucking is then also related to some extent to other injury type phenomena that can result in new hair growth such as:

  1. Numerous anecdotal reports of people seeing more hair on a limb after a cast or splint has been removed months after an injury.
  2. Dermarolling type intentional injuries to hair follicles.
  3. Mechanotherapy type intentional injuries to hair follicles.
  4. And maybe even lasers (LLLT) partly working by causing some injury (heating) to hair follicles?

If I was a bit more driven and had more spare time, I would try to experiment with plucking my body hair in both my arms and maybe legs too. I would try different amounts/densities and areas just as in the mouse experiment and take lots of photos.  If any one area became thick with new body hair, I would be quite surprised.

Dabur Research, FOL-005, Follicum, Hirsutism, Osteopontin, The University of Lübeck

Follicum

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Several days before I posted about IGF-1 and Follicept on March 30th someone e-mailed me to let me know that there was a new player in town called Follicum. Adding to the confusion is that there is also a much older and much hyped player in the hair world by the name of Follica that I have briefly mentioned in a few posts on this blog (and might cover in more detail in future). I wonder if I can start a company called “Follicle” or if that word is not allowed to be used as a company name?!

Follicum and its FOL-005 Hair Growth Product

Getting back to Follicum, the company is publicly traded and based in Sweden and has an unusual product under development called FOL-005. It is a small peptide designed for hair growth regulation through topical administration. It has a unique proprietary formulation based on a modified part of the endogenous human structural protein osteopontin.

The interesting thing about this product is that it can both inhibit hair growth as well as encourage hair growth. This would enable the drug to be used to reduce excess body hair (hirsutism), as well as to grow scalp hair.  I suspect that FOL-005 has some type of anti-androgenic properties.

Because this product has yet to undergo any clinical trials, I was not too keen to write a post about Follicum. However, I found some of the things about this company and its FOL-005 product interesting and therefore changed my mind. For one, the results from pre-clinical trials conducted by contract research organization Dabur Research Foundation (DRF) in India seem to indicate superior results from FOL-005 in comparison to Minoxidil. DRF also conducted similar studies with Minoxidil in the past and seems to be a reputable organization.

I find this whole idea of outsourcing pre-clinical trials quite interesting. It seems like new small-scale western drug producers can now get pre-clinical trials done for cheap in countries such as India. They can then skip expensive and lengthy stage 3 clinical trials by introducing their product in Japan, where there are more favorable regulations. We are finally moving faster.

As far as Follicum goes, there was a recent March 2015 article on the company in Life Science Sweden magazine. Of further note, the company could soon be working with relatively well known hair loss researcher Jennifer Klopper at The University of Lübeck in Germany. And with the The Fraunhofer Research Institution for Marine Biotechnology EMB, also in Lübeck. The University of Lübeck is renowned as one of the world’s topmost institutions when it come to science and medicine. It seems like the city of Lübeck will be one of the world’s many biotech hubs in the coming years.