I have covered HairClone (UK) in four different posts over the past decade. The company began the world’s first ever officially licensed hair follicle banking program in 2019. Thereafter, they planned to begin actual autologous dermal papilla (DP) cell multiplication (1,000 fold) and implantation work in a clinical setting in humans in the UK. However, initial delays due to Covid were followed by further delays due to financial reasons. But in February 2026, they finally made this jump. Read till the end of this post.
Note that Shiseido (Japan) started offering its dermal papilla sheath cup (DSC) cell hair multiplication procedure in Japan in 2024. This was after more than a decade of work in completing all three Phases of clinical trials, which were delayed by legal issues. Unfortunately, Shiseido’s hair multiplication procedure is still very difficult to get if you are not a Japanese citizen.
Per a study I covered last year on effective cell therapy for hair regeneration, both DP cells and DSC cells can induce new follicle growth. I also vaguely remember reading about a South Korean company that might offer both procedures together in the future.
HairClone’s current CEO Dr. Paul Kemp is also its founder. Moreover, Mr. Kemp also founded and led Intercytex (UK) several decades ago. Just like HairClone, Intercytex was working on dermal papilla cell culturing, but had to abandon this work in 2010 due to financial difficulties. This was a big surprise, since they even completed successful small-scale Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials in the UK. HairClone’s clinical target is an improvement over Intercytex’s past work due to advances in technology per Dr. Kemp. See his latest e-mail to me at the bottom of this post.
Note that on HairClone’s site, they primarily only claim that more dermal papilla cells means thicker hair. And they say that when DP cells are injected into thinning regions of one’s scalp, they can reprogram miniaturizing follicles into non-miniaturising ones. By getting this treatment every few years, you can maintain hair density throughout your life.
HairClone Begins to Carry out its Dermal Papilla Cell Multiplication Procedure in Humans in Guatemala
In a major new development, HairClone is now offering its dermal papilla cell multiplication and implantation (via injection) procedure in Guatemala. As of February 2026, it is mainly being carried out on Guatemalan residents so that HairClone can better follow up on these initial patients.
HairClone is developing this groundbreaking hair loss treatment in partnership with Dr. Marie Schambach of the Schambach Hair Clinic in Guatemala City, Guatemala. On the latter’s “Cloning Services” page, it states the following:
“The future is here! Technology allows us to store hormone-insensitive (DHT) follicular units in an international biobank and reproduce specific hair bulb cells for re-implantation in the affected area. This will allow the cells to migrate to the deficient bulb and not only regenerate it but also inactivate the hormonal function of each hair, enabling it to continue its normal growth. This technique is ideal for those experiencing early hair loss who want to maximize their chances of maintaining adequate hair density. The procedure should be performed approximately three times, with two to three years between each treatment.”
Lot of western companies in the stem cell and regenerative medicine world have undertaken this kind of move to countries in Central and South America. Largely due to more favorable government regulations where autologous cell therapy is seen more like a transplant than a medicinal product.
Dr. Paul Kemp’s Email
I only got this news last week after I decided to contact Dr. Paul Kemp after several years. I wanted to know if HairClone would ever start offering this procedure in the UK. Instead, I received a most unusual surprise. Below is Dr. Kemp’s email to me:
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Great to hear from you. Yes lots is happening here and we have a lot of exciting news. As you know, Dr. Marie Schambach is one of our clinical partners based in Guatemala City. I visited her last year and was really impressed with both her clinic and the private hospital where she is based, which is a facility shared by a number of other clinical specialties.
When given a tour of the state of the art molecular sequencing lab there, they mentioned that there was space next door. To cut a long story short, we obtained equity financing and built out, equipped and staffed a small GMP follicle banking and manufacturing facility there. It has been operational now for a few months and we have now tech transferred and validated our processes developed in the UK to the facility there.
Their regulatory system treats autologous follicle cells the same as a hair transplant, which gives us the ability to culture cells in our facility and have them implanted in Dr Schambach’s clinic. Through scientific collaborations that we have, we also have the ability to identify and analyse individual hair follicles even down to single cells in order to examine their response to treatment. This will be important and allow us to rapidly monitor and optimize the efficacy of the cell treatment.
Through the pioneering work of Intercytex, Aderans Research Institute, Replicel and others, it has been shown that autologous follicle cell therapy is safe and all have seen indications of efficacy. However, because of US and EU regulatory and scientific constraints, none were able to optimize this. This is not the case with us because of our links to the Schambach Hair Clinic, our clinical partner network, new manufacturing facility, UK research labs and scientific advisors.
I have been involved in trying to use cell therapy to treat androgenic alopecia since the founding of Intercytex in 1999. Back then all we could do was multiply cells and look at total hair count and hair shaft diameters over the treated area. Whilst this is obviously important, we had no way to scientifically understand the mechanisms involved and how we could improve the efficacy that we were beginning to see.
Our new set up is designed to overcome this and we are already culturing the cells from our first cohort of volunteer patients and are going to be starting treatments in the next month. Our plan is to concentrate on local patients so that we can more closely follow their progress and gain information on their response.
Once we are confident of the results, we can then offer the treatment more broadly and at a discount for patients who have banked follicles with us through our clinical partner network, although the actual cell treatment will need to occur at the Schambach Hair Clinic. Patients can have follicles extracted at any of our clinical partner clinics and sent to us. They only need to travel for the cell injection. Follow-ups take place back at the original partner clinics.
In the longer term we plan to scale up the facility and then obtain the local regulatory clearances in the US and elsewhere in order be able to start to treat people at our clinical partner clinics.
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