American Hair Research Society Summit

One of the less desirable aspects about writing this blog is learning new acronyms or alphanumeric product names virtually every week. Half way into this month, my street cred has already been enhanced by “SFRP1”, “WAY-316606” and “HSC660”. Today come “AHRS” and “IID”.

American Hair Research Society (AHRS) Summit 2018

Recently, I learnt that the American Hair Research Summit is holding its first conference from May 14-16, 2018 in Orlando, Florida at the Rosen Shingle Creek Resort. Having covered numerous US and global hair loss conferences on this blog in the past, I did not recall having ever heard of this particular society. It seems like this is the first ever conference being held by this newly formed association called American Hair Research Society (AHRS). It was previously called North American Hair Research Society (NAHRS).

On their website, they state the following:

“The American Hair Research Society (AHRS) is the former North American Hair Research Society (NAHRS). Because of the great interest and contributions in hair research from colleagues in Central and South America, the “NAHRS” has expanded to “AHRS”.

The AHRS has manged to get an excellent list of speakers and presenters at its first ever summit. Some points of interest:

  • Final Program Guide.
  • Abstract Book.
  • For a majority of us, the most interesting presentations are under the session titled as “Stem Cells, Hair Follicle Neogenesis & Regenerative Medicine”.
  • A number of you posted various links in relation to Aclaris Therapeutics’ press release about this conference. I removed all of them because I did not want that discussion to take place in the comments to my prior posts. The key sentence in this latest Aclaris press release is: “Current efforts to expand the range of diseases that could be targeted with JAK inhibitors will be discussed with emphasis on hair disorders, including alopecia areata and androgenetic alopecia.”
  • The Aclaris presenter Dr. Paul Changelian is an extremely respected researcher when it comes to JAK inhibitors. Especially tofacitinib.
  • Aclaris and Samumed are both Silver level sponsors of this event.
  • One of my inside sources e-mailed me today and said that there was some excitement about the results presented by Cassiopea in relation to Breezula. Before anyone gets too excited, remember that Breezula is just a topical anti-androgen and unlikely to cause totally balding regions of the scalp to regain their past glory. Nevertheless, a good maintenance treatment in itself would be very welcome.
  • Dr. George Cotsarelis chairs an important session titled “PRP: Hope or Hype?”. A number of other presentations on PRP are also worth tracking.
  • Also a number of presentations on the similarly controversial laser and hair growth subject in the session titled “Photobiomodulation, Thermal and Light Therapies”.
  • The women continue to take over. The four co-chairs:
Angela Christiano
Dr. Christiano
Maria Hordinsky
Dr. Hordinsky
Wilma Bergfeld
Dr. Bergfeld
Antonella Tosti
Dr. Tosti

 

 

 

IID 2018

Interestingly, the International Investigative Dermatology (IID) 2018 Meeting is also being held at the exact same Rosen Shingle Creek Resort location in Orlando from May 16-19, 2018. I am not too impressed with some parts of the IID 2018 website, but Aclaris is making several interesting presentations at this event. One of the abstracts is titled “Efficacy of topical tofacitinib in promoting hair growth in non-scarring alopecia” and the author is from Thailand. Usually, the JAK inhibitor related studies are authored by US based scientists, so this is a nice change.

Non-scarring alopecia includes androgenetic alopecia, so I looked around and found this paper by the same author. Interesting that so much varied research over the years has found VEGF to be so important for hair growth.

Also of note is the fact that so many of the Aclaris presentations entail tofacitinib. We are still not 100% sure as to which of the various “-tinib” JAK inhibitors and their combinations the company is modifying and using in its much anticipated covalently bound topical JAK inhibitor product for treating androgenetic alopecia.

However, it looks like a certainty that some variation of tofacitinib will be a major component of the final product.

John Travolta Hairpiece Update

Someone in a comment in the last post told me that I should never publish another hairpiece related post again. However, earlier today, a veteran member of this blog e-mailed me 64-year old actor John Travolta’s latest hairpiece photo from his recent appearance in Cannes, France.

So I have no choice and a hairpiece post it is yet again. A more useful hair loss cure and research related post will be published later today or tomorrow.

I previously covered Mr. Travolta in 2016, as well as earlier in the past when he once appeared in public without his hair. This is what he looks like without his hairpiece.

John Travolta Dancing with his Hairpiece on

In this latest Travolta dancing video, you can see the Grease an Pulp Fiction actor’s latest hairline. The important question to ask is the following: would Mr. Travolta still have the below moves and confidence if he did not have fake hair on top?