Category Archives: Wnt/Beta-Catenin

John Hood, Samumed, SM04554, Sunil Kumar, Wnt/Beta-Catenin

Samumed’s John Hood & Sunil Kumar

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So Samumed had yet another update two days ago. I was getting a bit annoyed and suspicious at seeing updates from the company every few days these past several weeks. Why can’t they provide all the information in one go if it has all been available for at least the past one month I presume?

It also seems like Samumed has only in the past month become active at providing press releases and sharing presentations on its website. Perhaps this is a sign that they could be sold in the coming year or are going to soon look for investors? All speculation on my part of course as I have negligible experience in the finance and investment arena.

Samumed Hair Loss Patents

In any event, I was 50/50 about covering this latest Samumed update in a whole blog post, but finally decided to go ahead after seeing something interesting. Samumed has 32 patents since 2010 according to Google Patent Search. Note that some of the same patents are listed more than once. Most of these patents involve Wnt/Beta-Catenin signaling related work, a crucial area of research in the hair loss world as well as in the broader medical world.

More specifically, a majority of Samumed’s patents involve work related to the Wnt pathway modulation via the use of Indazoles or something called 1H-pyrazolo[3,4-b]pyridine. I will leave it up to the chemistry expert blog readers on here to figure out further details behind these compounds and how they alter Wnt signaling.

John Hood and Sunil Kumar

It seems like a majority of Samumed’s patents involve two people:

  1. Dr. John Hood
  2. Dr. Sunil Kumar KC

Both these guys seem to quite accomplished scientists and have mild hair loss per their Linkedin photos here and here.

We have heard a lot about companies involved in finding a hair loss cure via PGD2 inhibition, PGE2 increase, wounding, hair cloning, hair multiplication, hair regeneration, dermal papilla cell manipulation, fat cell manipulation, newer anti-androgen development and more. Samumed seems to be the most likely company in the world at tackling hair loss via the Wnt/Beta-Catenin signaling pathway and therefore it is worth following the company even if it keeps releasing information in bits and pieces.

As far as the latest press release that I mentioned at the start of the post goes, the key sentence regarding Phase II clinical trials for the company’s SM04554 topical solution is that the product:

“Showed statistically significant increases for both objective outcome measures: non-vellus hair count (a primary outcome measures) and hair density (a secondary outcome measures), using the pre-specified statistical model.”

I am not overly excited about reading the above, as “statistically significant” could just mean yet another Minoxidil or Propecia (or even Bimatoprost — see Results) type treatment. However, with no evidence of significant side effects, SM04554 could be a great product if it enhances the effects of existing treatments. As opposed to different treatments cancelling each other’s benefits out and impacting the same hair positively, even if working via totally different mechanisms.

The most encouraging thing I read was that in in vivo animal models, SM04554 has shown to generate new hair follicles. This is a very rare outcome for any hair loss medication or treatment, as in most cases existing hair is made stronger and recently miniaturized hair is brought back to life. We are long overdue for hair growth success stories in animal models being replicated in homo sapiens.

Donatello Castellana, Macrophages, Mirna Perez-Moreno, Wnt/Beta-Catenin

Macrophages and Hair Follicle Stem Cells

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Update: Seems like the positive impact of macrophages on hair growth was already known in 2007. That study from Japan was titled “Macrophages boost hair growth.” Thanks to commenter “spain”.

I heard about all of the above developments right around when they first occurred. Nevertheless, I was still not particularly hopeful of anything significant happening in Spain when it comes to hair loss research related breakthroughs. Most of the widely respected hair loss research scientists in the world seem to reside in the US, UK, Germany, Japan and several other parts of Northern Europe and East Asia.

Macrophages and the Activation of Hair Follicle Stem Cells

However, two days ago, Spanish scientists (from the previously mentioned cancer research institute CNIO) led by Dr. Mirna Perez-Moreno and Dr. Donatello Castellana published a groundbreaking hair loss research related paper in the PLOS Biology journal titled “Macrophages contribute to the cyclic activation of adult hair follicle stem cells.” It should be noted that Dr. Moreno has previously worked at noted hair loss researcher Elaine Fuchs’ laboratory as a postdoctoral fellow. Further lending credibility to this paper is a third co-author and well known hair loss researcher by the name of Dr. Ralf Paus.

For the average layperson (including myself), the above publication is difficult to digest in its entirety. At least if one does not want to spend hours reading it and going back and forth with google dictionary. So below are links to articles with easier to understand summaries:

Article 1: From the sometimes great, usually trashy dailymail.

Article 2: From EurekAlert.

Article 3: From the Spanish elpais (use the “Translate to English” option in the Chrome browser).

The main findings:

  1. Macrophages (a type of white blood cell) can activate adult hair follicle stem cells.
  2. Mice started to regrow hair when they were given anti-inflammatory drugs. It seems like this whole year in hair loss research can largely be summed up by the words “inflammation” and “anti-inflammatory”.
  3.  Macrophages secrete a number of growth factors including a class of proteins called Wnt. You can do a search on this blog for Wnt, Wnt7b and Wnt/Beta-Catenin to learn more about Wnt proteins and corresponding pathways.

As usual the study was carried out in mice and not humans. However, I think that it is now only a matter of a short time before we see an increasing number of trials in humans. As I have mentioned many times, this will probably happen faster in Asia than in other regions due to regulatory reasons.