Sometimes, news items concerning major developments in the hair loss cure world suddenly bombard us like an incessant rainfall. This is certainly the case so far this month. Always a great feeling to get this type of drenching, but very time consuming. Earlier today, reader “Camaro” notified us that Sweden based Follicum’s latest investor presentation from the BioStock conference was already available on YouTube. See bottom of this post.
Although I just wrote a post earlier today, I decided to add this short one too since this Follicum CEO video presentation is worth a watch. I have covered this company and its FOL-005 hair loss product many times on this blog in the past. My February post that discussed Follicum is worth a reread. Currently, FOL-005 is in Phase IIA clinical trials (in early March they announced that the first patient in these trials was just treated).
Once you click on the link, the below video will start right after company CEO Jan Alenfall arrives on stage. Some very interesting slides in the presentation, including one with the implication that, at best, this product will work slightly better than topical Minoxidil. Such an upfront declaration makes me trust the company more. Note that oral Minoxidil works better than the topical.
The biggest news is that they are seeing a very high 75 percent successful response rate in initial results (Edit: Might have been referring to earlier trial results). They are testing out powder, cream and gel based topical formulations of FOL-005 in order to compound the best possible final topical product.
I am on Follicum’s mailing list and will add a link to the slides on here if they happen to send one.
I am on Follicum’s mailing list and the company had four significant developments during the past month that were deemed worthy of e-mailing to subscribers:
On January 18th, Follicum announced the identification of key receptors in human hair follicle cells to which the company’s lead hair loss candidate (FOL-005) binds. FOL-005 is a modified version of the endogenous protein, osteopontin.
On February 2nd, Follicum announced the launch of its English language website. It is worth going through the menu titled “Hair Growth”. The Swedish version of the site remains online.
Of most important to us, on February 7th, Follicum announced that it had received go-ahead approval from the German Medicines Agency (BfArM) and German Ethics Committee. This is to commence a Phase IIa clinical trial in Germany in relation to FOL-005 on human patients. The company will partner with Clinical Research Center for Hair and Skin Science (CRC) in Berlin and bioskin in Hamburg.
Follica
In 2016, Follica announced that it was going to address its hair loss treatment via the acronym “RAIN”. At the time, I guessed the “R” to mean Regeneration, and the “N” to mean Neogenesis. Earlier this month, blog reader “PinotQ” notified us that Follica owner Puretech most likely recently updated its website and now spells out that the “AIN” stands for Abrasion Induced Neogenesis. Perhaps we just missed this development last year, but it is important enough to spell out here.
French Fries
A few days after I covered the groundbreaking work of Dr. Junji Fukuda, major newspapers around the world figured out a different (i.e., clickbait) take on the story. One that clearly got far more publicity and Facebook likes. They labeled Dr. Fukuda’s discovery as “Chemical in McDonald’s French Fries Could Cure Hair Loss” plus other minor variations of that title.
All because the chemical (dimethylpolysiloxane) used in the McDonald’s french fries via the oil fryers was involved in part of Dr. Fukuda’s research, even though it had no direct influence on hair regrowth. This french fries fable has since became the biggest hair loss related story of the year, and is unlikely to be surpassed in superficial importance for the rest of this year.
McDonald’s french fries 12-month upward search trend due to hair loss cure story.
Unbelievably, numerous blog readers who already read my original post on this research still thought that the McDonald’s fries story was something totally different and perhaps worth looking into.
I had to delete the repetitive reader comments about this subject in recent posts and did not bother to respond to any e-mails abut this story.
“I have seen online comments asking, ‘how many fries would I have to eat to grow my hair?’” he said. “I’d feel bad if people think eating something would do that!”
