Recently, one of the blog readers sent me an e-mail stating that Dr. George Cotsarelis replied to him. I then decided to resend Dr. Cotsarelis an old e-mail to which I previously got no response. My e-mail was fairly generic and I asked him about updates on various key areas of hair loss research that he might still be doing.
George Cotsarelis Responds
The below is his reply from yesterday, which might just be a generic response that he sends to everyone (since the above mentioned blog reader also received a similar response):
Thank you for your interest in my research. Rest assured that we are continuing our work on hair follicle stem cells and hair follicle regeneration in the hopes of better understanding hair growth and developing treatments for hair loss.
Re PGD2R antagonists, Kythera, recently bought by Allergan, will be working on commercialization of these compounds for treatment of male pattern baldness.
Re FGF9, a small biotech company has licensed that IP and will be pursuing its commercialization.
My lab continues to work on developing novel treatments. The largest barrier is funding.
Sincerely,
George Cotsarelis, M.D.
Note that “PGD2R antagonist” is sometimes referred to as “PGD2 antagonist”, but these two phrases are not the same thing as the “R” stands for receptor. Thanks to the commenter who corrected my initial sentence.
FGF-9 is an important growth factor with hair growth benefits. I have made several posts in the past on various other fibroblast growth factors such as FGF-2, FGF-5 and FGF-7. Also see this interesting recent study on FGF-9 and wounding.
The PGD2 treatment route is far more interesting than the FGF-9 treatment route. My conclusion from reading Dr. Cotsarelis’ e-mail is that its best we focus on Allergen (Kythera)’s future announcements. We should avoid contacting the busy Dr. Cotsarelis regularly for any new information.
PGD2R is not the same thing as PGD2 . It’s the receptor . PGD2 binds to it to trigger its action . PGD2R antagonist competes with PGD2 on the receptor site without triggering the action, thus less PGD2 effect
Yes I should have used a better phrase than “essentially the same”. Basically, Dr. Cotsarelis used the phrase “PGD2R antagonist” in the e-mail, and many google articles and even studies use the phrase “PGD2 antagonist” (when the two are not the same thing). And then you also have the phrase “PGD2 inhibition” which is different!
The reply is generic but shows hope. Lets pray for commercialization to come real soon.
Dr Cotsarellis refers to funding. Is there any crowfunding or group working on this?
Is there anything that we hair loss sufferers can do to to speed up the dead of the loss? I’d love to help.
Leo.
I am bald and passing my golden age without hair. I am desperate. It geoparadized my dating prospect….
well, it shouldn’t be anymore.. since Puretech grabbed 100 million dollars recently. How can funding be a problem then???
I guess the problem is Cotsarelis/Follica has nothing to show after all this time and so they won’t get more.
Sorry to be a bummer, but given current progress, we won’t be having a cure soon (less than 10 years).
why sorry?
Hopefully, I will be proved wrong
We want stop take Propecia/Minoxidil and have a better treatment with less side effects.
Thats all great but what an agonist is still not the cure.. Its more of a “bandaid” good to hear that stem cell work is still occurring.
Dear Admin, thank you once again for this helpful piece of information.
Dr. George Cotsarelis is a renowned professional in hair biology research, and every step in the field is a valuable step toward a better understanding of how to control every aspect of hair growth. This is not even related only to pattern baldness anymore.
As for the funding, a couple of thoughts.
First, any funding should (and probably is, especially in those areas) managed according to a project plan and related mothodologies. How much money is needed to reach which goal? Just because the goal does not have any public information release it does not mean it was not reached. Second, as a group of interest and potential customers, we are very interested in finding and promoting ways to support trustworthy researches, so we will keep sharing related information on a regular basis in our channels.
Regards
Anyone have any luck contacting allergan?
well, shouldn^t be follica the one to make progressions on the FGF9 approach…. why it was lisenced to a small biotech company and not delivered to Follica
Greetings
Treat baldness in the final three things /
● Janus kinase inhibitors.
● pgd2 inhibitors.
● activate fgf9.
Hopefully Comments