Monthly Archives: December 2017

Google Alerts for Hair

Google Alerts for Hair Related News

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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.
FOL-005, Follicum

Follicum Latest Summary

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I have covered Swedish company Follicum a number of times in the past on this blog, with my first post about them going back almost three years. You can click on the company name that is right above the title of this post to read all my past posts about Follicum.

The company is 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.

Follicum 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.

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 here.