Kerastem: Adipose (Fat) Tissue and Hair Growth

Update: April 24, 2019 — Kerastem reported positive Phase II trial results for hair growth.

Update: Kerastem’s  website 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. Also, on July 28th 2015, the company obtained conditional FDA approval to commence phase II clinical trials.


On this blog, I have discussed the relationship between hair cells and fat cells numerous times.

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).

FYI — A Kerastem company video is embedded at the bottom of this post.

Celution & Puregraft Systems

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!

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.

Bimini, Puregraft & Kerastem

It should be noted that Bimini, Puregraft and Kerastem are all interlinked, with Bimini seemingly the holding company. 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.

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, a Biotech Hub

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.

17 thoughts on “Kerastem: Adipose (Fat) Tissue and Hair Growth”

  1. It’s great, not because of the science but because I feel people are trying news things! and that’s good.

  2. This will take 10 years to hit the market if it even works. Not too excited about any treatment unless I can see if it grow back a Norwood 6 to a thick Norwood 2. Growing peach fuzz or 30 hairs is not a treatment it’s a joke and an insult to us mpb sufferers

    1. Doctors already inject ADSCs and AAPE and PRP into scalps. This is just a different probably superior extraction method.

  3. One thing I feel is constantly overlooked in hair loss research, which I can’t understand, is 3alpha-hydroxysteroid (3 Alpha HSA). Within our muscles, it basically negates the effects of DHT (if we were to inhibit it, muscle hypertrophy would be huge). As far as I can see from a brief google scholar search, it is something which can be extracted/synthesised. Does anyone know whether this has been considered in HL solutions? Admin – any thoughts/input?

    1. gbh89,

      Very interesting. I never thought about this at all. If you google “3 alpha-hydroxysteroid hair” you will see a bunch of hair loss forum thread links from 2007 or so with some interesting thoughts. I might take one more look at this in detail after I finish with my next few important posts.

  4. Sorry guys I don’t mean to be pessimistic I am just tired of getting my hopes up for these miracles future treatments that never pan out. Yes doctors do these treatments now but I haven’t seen anything spectacular from it. Only that Korean trial had really good results

  5. Just found the nih clinical phase 2 trial for this . It starts dec 2015 and ends June 2017. Phase 3 will probably start a year later if this works and that will last a year. So you are looking at 2020 for release. That is best case scenario for a solution that will give you some hair growth but nothing great. They have this approved in Spain and Japan and the pictures look suspect. The before and after photos look like different people.

  6. Do you have any news Admin about Kerastem ? I can not find anything lately about. You seemed very optimistic about the treatment as I do. But there is no reference about it not a single person hasnt tried it yet. I am very interested to it if it does what it promise, even if it is expensive.

    Thanks for the great job Admin

  7. Thanks for the answer, I have already read it. I am a daily reader of your blog the last six months.

    Kerastem hair therapy seems to me the most promising method as far (if it’s true). I communicate with swiss clinic and they told me the cost but I can not find no one who took the therapy, to see real results. Is there anyone who knows ?

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