3D Culturing, Dermal Papilla Cells, Theracell

Theracell: Cell Based Hair Regeneration via 3D Culturing

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A new player has entered the hair loss world by the name of Theracell. Interestingly, the company is headquartered in the UK, but its laboratory is in Greece and its management team is entirely composed of people with Greek names.

More importantly, the management team is composed of very experienced PhDs. Even more importantly, the team members with photos are all somewhat balding. I tend to assume that balding people are usually more passionate about curing hair loss than are non-balding people, although that is of course not necessarily true.

Theracell

Theracell is trying to regrow hair via cell-based hair regeneration. They state that they will isolate stem cells from 10-20 follicles and use 3-D culturing to increase their numbers significantly prior to injecting them into the scalp as pre-follicular units. I wonder if their 3-D culturing method is similar to that developed by the renowned Colin Jahoda?

Although their cell-based hair regeneration page linked above did not specifically mention dermal papilla cells, the company is culturing dermal papilla cells per other parts of their website. They also list the name of their hair regeneration product as TC-RBD-5131, with “RBD” standing for Regenerative BioDermatology. The company is involved in a few other areas of medicine besides dermatology.

Perhaps I am being a bit too discerning, but on Theracell’s home page, I was quite surprised to see the word “Careers” in the top upper right spelled as “Carreers”. Quite a few photos on the site are not loading, while there are various other typos and inconsistencies. I would not be surprised if the company currently has few employees and limited funding as is often the case with some of the newer companies that I have covered on this blog.

But I will repeat…..thankfully, the management team is balding. It also seems like for a small country with just 11 million people, Greece is disproportionately represented in the hair transplant world. There are quite a few hair transplant surgeons based in Greece, and the well known hair transplant behemoth DHI Global is headquartered in that country.

As an aside and totally off-topic (except a connection with Greece) conclusion to this post, I have always felt that people who have a lot of body hair, especially back hair, tend to go bald much faster than people without much body hair and have said so before on this blog. I reached that conclusion over a decade ago based on what I observed in my own extended family and from what I have since observed in gym and swimming pool changing rooms.

Of course there are always exceptions to this rule, but the correlation is very strong. Many Greeks/Persians/Armenians are known to be very hirsute when it comes to their body hair, yet balding on their scalps. I started to notice this phenomenon over a decade ago when I was an avid tennis fan and followed Andre Agassi (Persian ethnicity) and Pete Sampras (Greek ethnicity). I am convinced that Pete Sampras has had a hair transplant since he retired.

Angela Christiano, Breezula, Cellmid, Cosmo Pharmaceuticals, JAK Inhibitors, Organovo, Rapunzel, Sergio Canavero

New Treatments for Thinning Hair in Women

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Although a lot of important developments have occurred in the hair loss world in the past several weeks, I have not been excited by most.

New Treatments for Hair Loss in Women

— A few days ago, the New York Times had a fairly detailed and interesting article on thinning hair in women. The article includes quotes from well known experts frequently mentioned on this blog such as Dr. Joseph Greco and Dr. Angelo Christiano. It seems like Dr. Christiano has helped start a company (called Rapunzel of course) where she will focus on hair multiplication via cell culturing.

I am not too excited about this as yet since clinical trials are 1-2 years away. In essence, this is yet another “cure is five years away” type venture. Even that timeline is optimistic based on the assumptions that she raises the requisite funds and that each stage of clinical trials progresses as planned. The one redeeming factor is that Dr. Christiano is very passionate about helping women with hair loss, perhaps largely because she also suffers from hair loss and wears a wig.

— The other interesting item from the above mentioned New York Times article was an explanation on why Latisse (Bimatoprost) will probably not work as well on the head as it does on eyelashes. According to the Cleveland Clinic’s Dr. Melissa Piliang, a well known hair loss researcher and dermatologist, Latisse works by shifting hair that is in a resting phase into hair that is in a growth phase. However, while 70 percent of eyelash hair is usually in resting phase, only 10-20 percent of scalp hair is usually in resting phase. I wonder if that 10-20 percent potential new hair growth is enough to make Bitamoprost at least as good as Minoxidil?

— Cellmid, a company that I discussed earlier this year, just announced very good results from an independently conducted trial of its FGF-5 inhibiting drug évolis ONE. I would be a lot more excited about this product if were not based on naturally occurring botanical extracts. And if there were more positive anecdotal forums posts from existing Australian users of the product. I just do not believe that any natural hair loss product can cause regrowth in bald areas of the scalp. In any case, their CEO Maria Halasz has Tweeted to me that the product will be in pharmacies in May.

— Italian company Cosmo Pharmaceuticals changed the name of its yet to be approved CB-03-01 topical anti-androgen product to Breezula per a March 25, 2015 detailed company presentation. Strange choice of name. The company also changed its own name to a more Italian sounding Cassiopea in April 2015.

— The two main stories in the hair loss world last year both involved JAK inhibitors reversing alopecia areata. The before and after photos in both cases (see bone marrow cancer drug Ruxolitinib and arthritis drug Tofacitinib) were mind blowing and took the global media by storm. This month, yet another JAK inhibitor (cancer drug Baricitinib) proved to have similar results, but the publicity surrounding this development was modest.

— Finally, I was surprised that the crazy Dr. Sergio Canavero of the full body transplant (or “head transplant”, as has been falsely named by much of the media) fame has already found a patient. So they are likely to proceed with this insanity in 2016. Even crazier, it seems like Dr. Canavero got over 100 volunteers asking him to be the first person to get a new body. I cannot imagine that this will ever work. More on Valery Spiridonov. You can also read this interview with him and this one with Dr. Canavero.