This morning, Follica announced positive interim data in its Phase II clinical trials. They are now on track to start pivotal trials at the end of 2019, which I discussed a month ago. In this latest press release, they have some interesting quotes from Dr. Ken Washenik and Dr. Rox Anderson.
Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali: Follica Clinical Adviser.
One of Follica’s well known clinical advisers, Dr. Dhaval Bhanusali, has kindly agreed to answer reader questions! We have been going back and forth about this for a few weeks, but it seems he is now ready after this latest news has become official.
I think that this is the first time that I have had success with anyone important on Follica’s team responding in person. Dr. Bhanusali works with various celebrities (e.g., Martha Stewart) and even starred in a Men’s Health article.
Readers on this blog have at various times posted links to Dr. Bhanusali’s Instagram and Twitter accounts.
Dr. Bhanusali told me the following:
“There are lots of things I can’t say because of NDAs and also legally because companies like Follica have investment partners that are publicly traded (so legally, not allowed to, even if I want to). But happy to talk in generalities at some point and genuine thoughts on things!
I haven’t kept up as much as I should have on hairloss websites, but I think the internet is unfortunately full of companies that take advantage of patients/consumers with false claims and it is super sad. Happy to help if you think I can educate on things that help patients long term.”
So please keep the above in mind when asking your questions in the comments to this post.
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!”
