Monthly Archives: September 2021

Geoff Hamilton, Stemson Therapeutics

Interview with Stemson CEO Geoff Hamilton

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I have covered Stemson Therapeutics (San Diego, USA) and its founder Alexey Terskikh (see interview) since 2015. My last post on the company was updated in 2020 when they raised $7.5 million from Fortunis Capital and Allergan.

Since then, Stemson raised another $15 million in series A funding, courtesy of AbbVie (which acquired Allergan in 2020).

Geoff Hamilton

Stemson Therapeutics’ CEO is Geoff Hamilton. In July 2021, he  wrote an interesting post on Linkedin titled “Stemson Therapeutics is working to make hair loss a problem of the past.” It was interesting to read about the origin of the name “Stemson” (portmanteau of “Stem” and “Samson”).

Key section:

Per Mr. Hamilton, curing hair loss is inordinately complex and will involve a multi-disciplinary approach, including:

  • Cellular reprogramming.
  • Biomaterial engineering.
  • Tissue engineering.
  • Machine learning and analysis of biological data.
  • Robotic transplantation solutions.

In a recent article, Dr. Cenk Sumen (Stemson’s Chief Technology Officer) discussed other difficulties. He stated that companies such as Stemson that are working on induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) therapies face problems getting tailored equipment for automation.

Earlier today, San Diego based “Market Podcast” published an interview with Mr. Hamilton on YouTube. Thanks to reader “Jan Miedza” for notifying us and even posting the first comment to that video.

From the interview, it is clear that Stemson is still years away from getting a product to market. They are yet to even start human clinical trials. However, the company is professional, well funded and supported by biopharmaceutical industry behemoth AbbVie. They have hired world class scientists, bioengineers, bioinformaticians and more.

Moreover, Dr. Terskikh’s research has already been going on for over a decade (including in Russia). Also of note, Dr. Hamilton mentions several times how biotechnology and stem cell research today is significantly ahead of where it was just a decade ago. His company’s progress is benefitting from these recent technological advances.