Bayer Licenses Hair Loss Treatment To Hope Medicine
A new therapy targeting the PRL receptor to treat male and female pattern hair loss is being developed by a Chinese biopharmaceutical compay and Bayer AG.
A press release was sent out April 7, 2019 by Hope Medicine Inc. detailing a newly signed licensing agreement with Bayer AG for the development of treatments for hair loss and endometriosis. Hope Medicine Inc. is a spin-out based on the research of Professor Rui-Ping Xiao and team from the Institute of Molecular Medicine at Peking University.
The team at Hope Medicine has created a PRL receptor (or prolactin receptor) antibody, essentially a medicine that blocks the signaling pathway of the PRL receptor. The press release mentions that this PRL receptor antibody has undergone a phase 1 trial for safety and has been studied for hair growth in primates before.
A quote from the article mentions:
“The PRL receptor antibody is a potent monoclonal antibody, blocking the PRL receptor-mediated pathway in a non-competitive manner. The drug product can be administrated subcutaneously. The antibody was well tolerated in a clinical Ph I study (combined single and multiple dosing).
The antibody was effective in stimulating hair growth in aged stump-tailed macaques, nearly doubling the number of terminal hairs after 6 months even in previously fully bald areas and showing a sustainable impact even after 2 years post treatment. Notably, the stump-tail macaque model is considered one of the rare predictive animal models for male and female pattern hair loss in humans. The study is a result of a close collaboration between Bayer scientists and researchers at IMM.”
For now it appears the drug is delivered via injection (subcutaneously), though it is quite possible it will be modified into a topical treatment in the future. Also for those unfamiliar, a macaque is a small monkey, which is interesting to note and appears a bit more promising than a typical mouse model. It may be a little while before we hear any news about this, but the press release does mention that Hope Medicine is looking forward to a phase 2 trial launch in US, China, and Europe.
Posted in Hair Growth Treatment
Interesting that hlc2020 discovered this 3 days later and you 4 days later.
I discovered it when Ahmed commented on the last article with a link to the press release.
Admin is there any news about Tissuse?
And what do you think about Allogeneic Hair Transplant?
No news about Tissuse yet until it’s published on the site. Allogeneic hair transplant is interesting but not a particularly practical method for the masses. It could help some though.
Hey Admin, do you believe we will get some form of update from Stemson this year?
Yes I do Keratin. Maybe around late summer, autumn.
Hi admin, I noticed that the Hope Medicine website has been offline in the last few months. Do you have any info about the reason? Also no social media profiles. If it were not for articles like yours, this company would be a ghost company at the moment.
Does this product from Bayer seems like something that could be added to the pipeline chart?
Sure thing Ralph, I’m well aware of it. Just looking for them to get into trials and hopefully put up a website as well.
Hi Admin,
Do we have any indication when hope medicine/ Bayer will launch a potential product? I understand they still need to start human trials but are you able to provide a general guideline on commercialization, providing all goes well. Thanks
A big part of that is when they actually start trials. But, if they manage to begin a trial around Summer 2022, they could theoretically commercialize the medicine by the end of 2025.
Thanks, it’s great to see all these new options. Really would like to see something come to fruition soon 🙂 I appreciate your response!