ISHRS — International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery.
ISHRS 23rd Annual Meeting in Chicago, Illinois.
The 23rd ISHRS annual meeting just started today in Chicago, Illinois. Unlike in years past, I did not have time to write a post about this important event prior to it commencing. In any case, I will update this page with more details over the next several days as the conference proceeds. The meeting runs from September 10-13.
Day 1
— By far the biggest and most exciting news thus far on the first day is Kerastem’s update. I discussed Kerastem in detail last year. In the new update, their small trial on 9 patients in the UK resulted in around a 20 percent hair growth from just 1 injection in all patients. It does seem, however, that the treatment will not help those that are totally bald. These results clearly support growing research from recent years that suggests a very strong link between fat cells and hair cells.
Some key quotes from Dr. David Perez-Meza:
“The authors reported a 100% patient response rate to the Kerastem Therapy at 6-months.
We are very pleased with these initial clinical outcomes, as they represent results that are on par or better than those of traditional medical approaches to hair loss.”
— A really interesting summary of the finally available Okuda Papers from 1939 was presented by Dr. Jimenez. In those papers, the now deceased Dr. Shojui Okuda covered his own research related to hair transplantation as well as older groundbreaking research from the 1800s!
— Dr. John Kahen’s PRP summary. Only a single patient, but great photos. Significant increase in hair density after 6 months and, interestingly, the patient saw his light brown hair become dark brown.
— Dr. Jerry Cooley presented something on bio-enhancements. Link not yet available.
— It was announced on Twitter that this was the largest attended ISHRS meeting to date in its 23 years of existence.
ISHRS Social Media Pages
Make sure to check out the official ISHRS social media pages for the most important updates.
And in July 2017, I discussed Stromal Vascular Fraction (SVF) and hair growth. This subject is directly related to Kerastem.
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).
Kerastem’s positive hair growth results have been covered in two papers:
July 6, 2017: “Hair follicle growth by stromal vascular fraction-enhanced adipose transplantation in baldness.”
May 16, 2020: “Cell enriched autologous fat grafts to follicular niche improves hair regrowth in early androgenetic alopecia.”
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.
Celution, Puregraft Systems & Bimini
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
