Epibiotech Prepares For Important Clinical Trial, Pig Study Results & More
Epibiotech continues to announce important milestones and progress leading up to a Phase 1 clinical trial for its cell therapy in AGA.
Innovative Drug Discovery For Hair-Loss Therapy Symposium
news.mt.co.kr
Earlier this year in June, Epibiotech co-hosted a hair loss research conference in South Korea with Yonsei University’s Pharmaceutical Research Institute. The meeting, titled “Innovative Drug Discovery For Hair-Loss Therapy”, included researchers from various Korean universities, as well as representatives from Korean biotech companies working on hair growth such as Epibiotech, CK Regeon, and Inventage Labs. The university researchers presented on topics including: genes which promote inductivity in hair follicle cells, gene regulation of hair follicle stem cells, and the correlation between stress and regeneration in hair follicles. That symposium lineup sounds very robust, to be honest.
Epibiotech CEO Jong-Hyuk Sung’s presentation on the progress of his EPI-001 cell therapy was likely the main attraction of the conference. Sung shared that injections of EPI-001, which is composed of human dermal papilla cells, were able to increase hair count by 40% and hair diameter by 30% in pig skin after one month. It is prudent to point out that the increase in hair growth was native pig hair; this is the conclusion we can come up with from the limited information. This is a different scenario than if Stemson Therapeutics were able to sprout dozens of hairs on pigs which have been seeded with human skin. Those would effectively be considered de novo human hairs. Nonetheless, the announcement is more encouraging than typical mouse study data. Sung also confirmed that Epibiotech will be applying for an IND (application for a new clinical trial) by the end of 2022 and a phase 1 clinical trial for EPI-001 is expected in 2023. Over the past years, Epibiotech has worked on proprietary culturing methods for the purpose of maintaining important DP cell characteristics even when the cells are multiplied.
Humedix Collaboration For Cell Therapy Development
In a recent update from September 2022, Epibiotech announced that they have entered a joint development agreement with biotech company Humedix, which is a publicly traded company in Korean. Humedix specializes in dermal filler and injectable aesthetic products such as hyaluronic acid, so the collaboration with Epibiotech makes a lot of sense. This joint venture can be seen as a very auspicious development for Epibiotech and EPI-001. It shows that an established biotech company believes in the potential of EPI-001 and is willing to share costs and effort for the purposes of developing it. Will the R&D which Epibiotech has completed to improve DP cell inductivity (a hurdle which has hindered previous industry attempts) pay off into a game-changing cell therapy for hair growth? This is what remains to be seen. Of course, we’ll be watching.
New Company Bonus: Stemon Inc.
While the news above holds the greatest immediate significance, I find there is always something exciting about new research, new techniques, and new therapies aimed at hair growth. Meet Stemon Inc. of South Korea. Stemon is a biotech company utilizing ultrasound to reprogram dermal fibroblast cells to produce “designer” exosomes called Reprosomes. The Reprosome webpage shows a short animation of how the process works. Dermal fibroblast cells are placed in dishes containing a culture medium and then treated with ultrasound frequencies, also known as the Entr system. Once treated with the ultrasound frequencies, the dermal fibroblasts will absorb factors from the surrounding medium and then produce exosomes which reflect the type of medium which was used. For example, there is a hair follicle cell induction medium which produces Reprosomes suitable for hair regeneration applications. More information can be found on the far right tab of the Reprosome page. Stemon has also developed skin regeneration and telomere restoration Reprosomes.
Posted in Epibiotech, Hair Growth Treatment, Stemon Inc.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to share thoughts on Epibiotech and Stemon Inc.
i think its interesting that every person in that group picture has a full head of hair!!
I’d think there would be at least a couple on the staff who know the misery hairloss causes us all!!!
just an observation, lol.
At least Epibiotech are working with pigs. The mouse experiments are useless when it comes to effectiveness in humans. Their skin is too different from ours. Really the whole mouse testing thing needs to be stopped. Start with pigs, they have a skin type similar to ours; this will save time and gets us results faster to know if treatments are effective. Stemson Therapeutics have been doing pig studies for 2 years and are silent regarding their results. They hire people always but when it comes to getting something accomplished, we hear nothing but silence from them. I’ve given up thinking they will succeed. Can any really succeed to grow thick and tightly dense hairs when the follicles are dead or scarred? What can be done for scarring alopecia? More research into finding a way for hair to regrow in this situation needs to be worked out. I think wounding the skin, to create new skin with the correct growth factors is the best chance of this right now to get follicular neogenesis.
Stemson usually have news towards the end of the year, I’d expect some news from them sometime this year. They wouldn’t continue hiring and spending money pointlessly if there was no results.
Stemson has some serious money behind it: not least from Allergan. The time line for market is at least seven, and more probably ten years. I don’t think you should expect them to be updating us every few months. Personally, from what I have seen from their online interviews and their website, it looks very encouraging. That said, this is cutting edge stuff and we can only wait and hope. And, needless to say, they are not the only serious contenders out there. These Korean companies are also reason for optimism.
Finally some legit stuff in the cell therapy field. Remember when all these companies make 3/5/10 years plans on clinical trials. Impressive that Epi is using month to count their progress.
One interesting point is that though it is pig hair, “increase hair count by 40% and hair diameter by 30% in pig skin after one month” shows statistical improvement after one month, what would the results look like 3,6,12 months from transplantation? Similarly with a hair transplant, it takes 1 year for optimal results to show.
Congrats. HLC2020 and now you are the only two places that discovered the Korean conference and Korean language article (and thought of translating it)! The two best blogs!
Thanks JC. 👍
Thanks for the updates FT, great to hear there’s a cell therapy treatment going into clinical trials
“In early 2022, an unprecedented partnership was concluded between L’Oréal and Verily, an Alphabet subsidiary specializing in precision health. The objective is to decipher the mechanisms of hair and skin aging and to support the strategy and the development of products in terms of new precision technologies at the service of beauty.”
I’m curious what will develop from it.
https://www.loreal.com/fr/science-et-technologie-beaute/recherche-innovation-au-service-beaute/innovating-through-science/
Quick update on topical dutasteride. I was on oral fin then dut for about 25 years. About a year ago decided to taper off oral dut and use only topical dut. Currently oral dut once a week, .75 topical everyday, once a day, topical spironolactone once a day. Does this work, yes. Does it help maintain, yes. Is it as good as oral, no, as I’ve lost some ground. For me, oral dut is still the gold standard, along with oral minox. I am not a “sides” guy so will be ramping back up to oral dut everyday. I believe in the “kitchen sink” approach, will still use topicals in some form, maybe not the stuff I’m curently using from a pharmacy that is expensive and inconvenient. I remember when Dr. Lee introduced Xandrox which worked well for me, he said I could get off oral fin, long story short I needed both.I think topical fin/dut have their place if sides are a big issue for you or other reasons but oral dut, fin, minox are the most effective for stemming hair loss and potential regrowth, for me anyways. Hope this helps.
I think I have not seen this document here, I leave it in case someone wants to read about the scaffolding that Stemson Therapeutics is manufacturing.
https://patents.google.com/patent/US20220105247A1/en?inventor=Alexey+V+Terskikh
Thank you Crazyhair,
Now, we know what Stemson wants to do.
It is really open and clear document. They will eliminate hair direction and bad cosmetic views for seeding the hair follicles.
But i am pretty sure it will be a unbelievable expensive treatment.
Yeah, it will be very expensive at first for sure, but with a lot of major scientific advancements like this, once the initial roadblock all before failed has been passed things often go very quickly & other companies won’t want to miss out on it which results in price dumping. I mean with Fukuda there already is an alternative approach that focuses on streamlining the process as much as possible to be able to offer it more affordable to the masses. I’m also sure once it catches on more specialized tech will be developed to streamline the process even more which again =cheaper costs.
Let’s also not forget to give some good energy & hopes to verteporfin as well because in the best case that would give the chance of the body doing some of the “cloning” all by itself at a relatively low cost 😉
I think, Stemson is gonna find the remedy for AGA for sure. Because their approach is more scientific than all others. But on the other hand
treatment delivery to us takes so much time and should be huge expensive.
We need something like SCUBE3 for fast solution. That is why i am really cruise about Amplifica.
The rest researchs are totally garbage, just founding hunters.
Don’t discount Epibiotech, if one injection can provide 30-35% increase in terminal hair density in just a month, that’s a game changer for sure. Of those hairs a DHT resistant then that’s a instant cure. Hairclone Uk seems to be a scam at this point( but i may be wrong, they might have some funding issue) but DP cell therapy has huge potential if cultivated correctly, only time will tell.
Wouldn’t call Hairclone a scam, from what read on Dr. Farjo’s (medical adviser) Twitter it’s a mix between funding & of course the last 2 COVID years haven’t been easy on any company at… Which is something a lot of folks on Hairloss Blogs/Forums lately forget when they judge companies for not sticking to thier inital timelines.
Calling it a scam means they would have went through all those years, establishing clinical partnerships, cell culturing infrastructure etc just to purposefully deceive people seems a bit far fetched to me honestly… Sure thier endeavour could still fail at somepoint if thier treatment is not working as planned, but it still wouldn’t be scam then just very unfortunate…
I agree Cygnus, a scam would indicate that they have no belief in their own product and are just in it for the money. There are other factors involved in biotech, including competency and eventual efficacy which is out of most researcher’s hands until trials. There may be a few exceptions, but everything is not a scam.
I hope you are right Franklin but Replicel was failed with DP cell therapy even though they working with Shiseido. Replicel has been working on it over 12 years.
Now the huge company is just developing a funny dermal deliver injector.
How is Replicel failed? They are still working on it in fact there is currently even a trial in Japan still running. The WIRED article from earlier this month even included Replicel. Replicel’s issue is that they are in legal trouble with Shiseido & looking for a different partner now. It makes sense for them to develop a dermal delivery’s injector as well because it’s needed for the treatment after all.
Cygnus they didn’t fail but they’ve been around since 2011- 2012 and they just released shitty results a couple of years ago as expected with that approach lol. Maybe university of North Carolina has a better approach (I think they are working with DP cells) idk.
Fair enough to be critical of it.
I honestly completely forgot about the first results Replicel published, while yes they were really subpar, from the tone they had back the first trial was more of a “proof of concept” to see if anything at all would happen and to go on from there though.
Same with HairClone while the first treatment sounds underwhelming to most, the base idea of starting with a “simpler” treatment first before going for the neogenesis approach which is way harder, doesn’t sound like such a bad plan (to me at least).
But maybe I’m just biased in a way here that I have
acquaintances, who work/studied in the biotech sector (not with hair though) and who also were involved with stem cells in the past. They told me that it still is a lot of trial and error involved in the process and that producing shit results can often even be a good thing because then you know for sure how it doesn’t work if that makes sense.
It’s annoying for those desperately waiting, but I think we shouldn’t forget that it’s a difficult task and a lot of waiting game for the researchers as well because often you need to wait weeks and/or months just to see if you were on the right track in the first place…
I don’t think hairclone or replicel are scams they haven’t scammed anyone. I just think that there approach is shitty and that they are wasting their time lol. Nobody wants something that is going to give little results anymore! we are tired of little to no results we want something that actually has potential or can restore any level of baldness.
I’m a tough critic 😉
New interview with Stemson https://wxpress.wuxiapptec.com/geoff-hamilton-co-founder-ceo-stemson-therapeutics/ Geoff stated they have successfully completed their pre-clinical trials.
Yoyo, I think you misinterpreted that statement from Geoff. He said they will being human trials upon successful completion of the pre-clinical, not that they have finished pre-clinical.
Ah it’s a little confusing now I’m not sure which one it is lol
Stemson will go through Series B funding next year. I think this is a very good sign
Where U know?
Interesting found this on Reddit from user poppedcornea https://www.sheaff-ephemera.com/list/evans_vacuum_cap/
😂
I’m sick of reading about how things work so well to grow non miniaturised animal hair (besides which, pigs have thick, bristle-like hair??!). The only value I have seen in any studies involve women and women which age and/or MAYBE the monkeys with pattern baldness. They gotta skip all the bullshit and start implanting human skin with miniaturised hairs or just use those of us white aga who are suicidal anyway and don’t care about what happens to us lmao. Buy for real the only treatments in the last 20 years worth any note are the prolactin/monkey one and the doctor who used that drug to grow new hairs out of HT scars… and even then that part of the head isn’t affected by dht so who the hell knows.
Woah take it easy dude
I am % 100 agree with you
The biotechnology companies are wasting the time just for paper, patent, foundation, licensing, preclinical trial, pigs, mouse, monkeys, insects, birds, company marriages, advertisements, etc. At the end a Huge zero.
I really regret not to choose my subject as a molecular and biotechnology engineer when i was young instead of a stupit engineering.
Just focus on something and bring a real solution, not a fish story.
I don’t understand some readers here, they are still waiting for DP cell therapy .
This treatment was failed from intercytex time.
Wasn’t Intercytex failure 14 years ago, you surely don’t believe there have been 0 developments and progress in both science and technology that you have the same faith now is you would’ve back then lol?
Good perspective YoYo.
To also add Intercytex/Adrians may have failed mainly due to funding issues, but the results they did produce weren’t even that bad to be honest & as you said that was 14 years ago.
Paul Kemp even once said in an interview stated that the technology did improve significantly since then. Back then it was very hard to observe cell cultures, it almost impossible to know if they had enough viable members of a specific cell type cultured until I they injected and saw if anything would happen.
Today can see it all beforehand,
the evolving technology factors so much into it as well.
* PS sorry for all the typos to my auto- completion seems to have completely scrambled things again… I really should have proof read it 😅
Last thing I’ll say about DP and the companies. Honestly I don’t care about any company working with DP cells it’s not worth another comment from me. It doesn’t effect me. I have my eyes on stemson and a couple others. Hairclone can do the marketing bullshit all day I may have bad hair loss but I’m not there targeted customer lol 🤣😂 😉
Hello there admin..
Do you know what is going on with the hair loss talk site?? Is it shut down?? Do you know when it will be ok??
Vlmp, I don’t know and I don’t follow that site much at all.
They’ve added yet another member to the Stemson team, looks like things are going in a positive direction for the company. Really hope next year they’ll be able to get their Series B funding.
https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6982864698929025024/ just in case anyone was wondering