Category Archives: Fat Cells

Kerastem, Adipose-Derived Regenerative Cells, Craig Ziering, Fat Cells, Ken Washenik

Kerastem: Adipose (Fat) Tissue and Hair Growth

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Update: April 24, 2019 — Kerastem reported positive Phase II trial results for hair growth.

Update: Kerastem’s  website (now Bimini Health Tech) has been revamped and has before and after photos if you scroll down, as well as links to clinics outside the US (e.g., see Japan Kerastem Clinic) where the treatment is already available. Also, on July 28th 2015, the company obtained conditional FDA approval to commence phase II clinical trials.

On this blog, I have discussed the relationship between hair cells and fat cells numerous times.

Kerastem

One thing missing in the above three posts was a private sector company working on a cure for hair loss based on using adipose (fat) tissue. That wait has now come to an end. Last week, a relatively new San Diego based company named Kerastem Technologies submitted a request to commence STYLE clinical trials in order to:

“Evaluate the safety and feasibility of the Celution and Puregraft Systems in the processing and preparation of an autologous fat graft enriched with adipose-derived regenerative cells (ADRCs) in the treatment of early alopecia androgenetica.”

The above link to the clinical trials page has a contact person’s e-mail address on there that I will not publish here. This contact person is Dr. Eric Daniels, Kerastem’s chief medical officer.

Note that adipose-derived stem cells (ADSCs) are a subset of adipose-derived regenerative cells (ADRCs).

FYI — A Kerastem company video is embedded at the bottom of this post.

Celution & Puregraft Systems

The Celution system is manufactured by a San Diego based company called Cytori Therapeutics. The US  FDA approved and EU CE-Marked Puregraft system was also developed by Cytori, but divested in 2013 to Bimini Technologies. I recommend watching the Puregraft video on YouTube. I am now starting to look at my body fat in a less negative way. Maybe it will end up being more useful than I thought!

Ken Washenik is Involved

One of the world’s most renowned hair loss researchers (that I have covered a few times on this blog) Dr. Ken Washenik is involved in this clinical trial via being the principle investigator. This adds significant credence to these trials, although it should be noted that

Dr. Washenik has been overly optimistic about a hair loss cure in the past. For example, see my post on Aderans’ failure or read some of the overly optimistic time-frame related quotes by him in this 2004 article.

Bimini, Puregraft & Kerastem

It should be noted that Bimini, Puregraft and Kerastem are all interlinked, with Bimini seemingly the holding company. The founder and CEO of Puregraft, Bradford Conlan, is also the CEO of Kerastem and Bimini per his current Linkedin profile. For our analysis purposes, these three companies are one and the same entity.

Dr. Eric Daniels and Dr. Craig Ziering

Earlier, I mentioned Kerastem’s chief medical Dr. Eric Daniels as the contact person for these trials. Further research on him led to my finding that he presented a paper titled “Hair Follicle Stimulation by Stromal Vascular Fraction Enhanced Adipose Transplantation” in 2014 at an International Federation for Adipose Therapeutics and Science (IFATS) Conference.

Although I could not find that paper online, google gave me a link to a thread where it says 40 percent hair regrowth per early results, It seems like Dr. Craig Ziering was another author of that same paper. So now I should take Dr. Ziering and his work on stem cells more seriously in spite of the recent issues with his website. I wonder if he already has access to the tried and tested Celution and Puregraft systems, giving him a leg up on other hair doctors offering early stem cell treatments?

San Diego, a Biotech Hub

San Diego has become a hotbed of global biotechnology related research, and the hair loss world is no exception. Kerastem is the fourth San Diego based company that is now listed in the worldwide listing of hair loss research centers on this site. The other three are Histogen, Samumed and Sanford-Burnham.

Timeline

Per the comments to this post and on various hair loss forums, it seems like some people are overly pessimistic about the timeline for ADSC and ADRC type treatments. Surgeons around the world are already treating patients with ADSC, AAPE and PRP. This kind of treatment will not take too long to come to fruition.

Craig Ziering, Fat Cells, Valerie Horsley, Yale University

Dr. Valerie Horsley, Dr. Craig Ziering, Fat Cells and Hair Growth

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In recent years, various researchers have found a strong connection between hair cells and fat cells and their communication with each other. I covered some of this in a post from last year.

Dr. Valerie Horsley

A year or so ago, I bookmarked a video from Dr. Valerie Horsley regarding the link between fat cells and hair cells on the scalp that I wanted to post on this blog, but postponed doing so after visiting the Horsley Laboratory (at Yale University) website and not seeing much on hair loss research developments in the news page. I was waiting to post that video as part of a longer post also covering a recent news development, and today is finally the day.

Since the video cannot be embedded, here is the link to it. It is titled “Getting under your skin. How stem cells regulate hair growth.” You can also read more about the Horsley Lab’s findings here. Apparently, fat cells in the skin “talk” to hair cells and this communication is necessary to induce hair growth. The lab’s researchers are trying to find ways to re-enable this communication and perhaps grow back hair in balding regions.

Dr. Craig Ziering

Now as far as the recent news development goes, it is not a newspaper item, but rather, an interesting new addition to a well known hair transplant surgeon’s product offerings. Dr. Craig Ziering, who is based in the US, seems to have recently updated his UK website, and one of the pages on there was quite a surprise to me.

Dr. Ziering has apparently invented a trademarked “STEMULATION” device to separate stem cells from extracted body fat, which are then injected into the scalp to aid hair growth. The webpage is not complete yet (a lot of “lorem ipsum” placeholder text in there), and there is not much on the page about studies that support this new procedure. It also seems like the contents of that webpage disappeared and came back and then disappeared yet again and then got moved somewhere else and then disappeared again from the new location. I am skeptical about this whole thing, but the EU has given Dr. Ziering a CE Mark that is required to sell or market a medical device.