Wounding, Interleukin-1 and Other Hair News

There were 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

Wounding induced hair growth has been in the news a lot over the past several years.

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. Fast forward to this month, and both scientists are back in the news and (via a collaboration with researchers from UC San Diego and from India) published an important 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 words used throughout the paper and of primary importance to us (“wounding” or “wound“) is missing from the above title, although not from the complementing photo (see red area in the image further below).

These scientists 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 (i.e., hair > scar improvement).

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 an entirely different group all the more exciting, and further validates the potential of wounding spurred hair regrowth.

Wounding, Interleukin-1 and Hair Growth

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 to gain free access to this whole paper. I am, however, in no doubt that any new development related to 3D spheroids and hair culturing is of utmost importance and warrants coverage on this blog.

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 virtually 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 versions) 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 favorable 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 other companies seem to do), although I hope I am wrong.

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 page and several Italian hair loss forum members are claiming that the product is coming out in early 2018. For the time being I will refrain from writing a post on this, as it seems like there is 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.

PolarityTE 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”.

Hair Loss, Graying Hair and Heart Disease

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.

Anderson Cooper Grey 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.

Patrick Stewart Bald

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.