PolarityTE, Hair-Bearing Skin

PolarityTE Update

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PolarityTE Logo
PolarityTE.

I first covered the exciting new company known as PolarityTE in the middle of last year. The company was in the news a lot in 2017, primarily because of its miraculous skin regeneration product: “SkinTE”. The new skin is also supposedly able to produce intact new fully functioning hair follicles.

  • However, in that original post, I pointed out a negative article dated June 7, 2017. It was published on SeekingAlpha (with research conducted by a company called Cliffside Research) that took a critical view of PolarityTE. Their conclusion was that COOL shares had an “at least 64% downside from current valuation“. On that date, the stock was worth $18. As of today, it is worth a little over $23.
  • Funnily enough, exactly 6 months later, on December 7, 2017, SeekingAlpha published another negative article about PolariytTE. This time the research was conducted by a company called Hindenburg Investment Research. Their conclusion was even more dramatic: “We believe the common equity is likely worthless“.

It seems like Hindenburg Research does not even have a website, while both Hindenburg and Cliffside have few Twitter followers. The latter is often an indication of influence and longevity of existence. I originally thought that Seeking Alpha was a reputable website in the investment world. However, upon further research, I found that Seeking Alpha’s content is derived via crowdsourcing.

Hopefully, the financial experts who visit this blog can help us better understand the validity of the above two negative conclusions. As I mentioned in my original post on PolarityTE last year, the company’s key staff members are extremely well qualified. They all have impeccable medical and surgical experience credentials.

PolarityTE Rapidly Marches Forward

Just a week after the second of the above two negative opinions about PolarityTE was published (albeit from anonymous online contributors), the company announced the application of its SkinTE product on actual human patients at multiple medical centers. A great surprise for us in the hair loss world who are so used to only seeing initial mice based trials.

Moreover, just one week after the above announcement, on December 20, 2017 PolarityTE announced the creation of a new 200,000 square feet corporate headquarters.

Developing a Hair Restoration Product

And I saved the best news of all for last.

The only reason that I even covered PolarityTE in the first place last year is because I wondered if their hair-bearing damaged skin replacement technology could also be used on balding scalps. In order to replace perfectly normal undamaged skin for the sole purpose of growing new hair follicles. PolarityTE has mentioned on its website that this is an area of interest to them with great potential.

More recently:

  1. One of the main images on the SkinTE section of PolarityTE’s website (image titled “manufacturing-process”) now shows a bald man. His scalp has then been enlarged/expanded to show what seems to be like new follicle growth.
  2. One of this blog’s readers e-mailed the company last week and got a response suggesting that they would be developing a hair loss related product. However, due to the anonymous nature of the comments on this blog, I remain cautious. I have contacted PolarityTE to verify this potential development. I asked them this very question last year, but got no response and hope for better this time.

Another new Entrant in the Hairy Skin Sector?

As if one new entrant in the hair-bearing skin department was not enough, we start 2018 with even more good news. Earlier today, various newspapers announced that a US team of researchers from Indiana University School of Medicine had succeeded in growing both upper and lower layers of mice skin using stem cells. More importantly, the new skin also grew perfectly normal hair follicles.

— Actual study here.

— As always, the UK’s DailyMail knows what this blog’s readers are most interested in and cuts through the chase for us.

Google Alerts for Hair

Google Alerts for Hair Related News

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One of the most useful services that Google provides is something called “Google Alerts“. I am amazed at how many people still do not know about this feature even though it has been out since 2003. It has helped me tremendously in the past, both in my work-life for research purposes as well as in my personal life (e.g., getting notified once a week about electric car lease deal related news).

Basically, anytime you want to find out if a particular subject matter or phrase that you are interested in was recently mentioned on the internet (whether as a news story, blog post, video, public relations announcement, discussion board post and more), google alerts will notify you via e-mail if you request as such.

I have set up hair and hair loss research related keyword and keyword phrase google alerts ever since I first started this blog. Because the list has now become way too large, I have started moving many of my daily alerts to weekly alerts. I have even started removing some keyword alerts entirely if I have not seen anything of major interest related to them during the past year.

Hair Loss Cure Related Google Alerts for 2018 and Beyond

So to end 2017, I thought it would be a good idea to encourage readers who have used Google Alerts in the past (or who plan to do so in the future) to add “hair” related terms to their list for 2018. It will also help me whenever I miss something for rare keywords that readers might have included in their alerts. If some readers set daily alerts for subjects that I might have only set weekly alerts for in 2018, it would also be of benefit to us all.

Perhaps of even more importance and interest, you can play around with regional settings as well as language settings while setting your alerts. I am curious to see what you find in your particular region that differs from my region of the United States of America (English language only setting for me). News from China and Japan especially interests me, although the Baidu search engine dominates Google in China.

Miscellaneous Thoughts

If you decide to participate in this experiment:

Make sure that the “Show Options” feature to the right of the “Create Alerts” blue button box is expanded before setting your Google Alerts via the link I posted earlier. You might have to start typing in the search box first before the feature shows up.

Also:

  • Which hair loss related keywords or keyword phrases are you most interested in all the time (every year) and want to read about on a daily basis whenever mentioned on the internet? In my case, some examples would be “Dutasteride hair”, “Follica” and “Takashi Tsuji”. I have set up daily alerts on all those subjects.
  • Which hair loss related terms are you most interested in during the year 2018? Post in the comments if you care to share. Some of my interests for 2018 include companies and subject matters that are not exactly in the hair field, but still related (e.g., “PolarityTE”, “head transplant”, “robotic hair transplants” and so on).
  • Note that I have never set up any “as-it-happens” alerts, which seems like overkill and way too much of a distraction for me. If you are so inclined, experiment with such real-time notifications.
  • Also note that you can select to be alerted with “only the best results” instead of “all results” if you want to reduce the quantity of material that you need to weed through.