HairClone Growing, Aclaris IND: Weekly Thoughts 11/9/16

Hello everyone, and welcome to another edition of Weekly Thoughts.

It has been a little while since my last check in with you all. You can chalk it up to a busy schedule and the fact that there hasn’t been too much significant news in the hair growth treatment world recently. As always, there are positive developments happening behind the scenes. Let’s take a look at what has popped up in the past couple weeks.

HairClone Expands Their Team

The new-school hair growth startup, HairClone, has recently added members to its scientific advisory board as well as its clinical partner group. They’re expanding personnel the same way they hope to expand dermal papilla cells in culture. (hey, I’ve got to find a way to keep things funny around here) The first big addition was Prof. Paul Sharpe to the scientific advisory board. Prof. Sharpe works extensively in the developmental biology of teeth. In other words, he studies the molecular and cellular processes that go on as a tooth is formed and grows. His research also includes looking at the role of mesenchymal stem cells in tooth regeneration (useful venture as well). HairClone has noted on their website that the biological development processes of hair and teeth are similar and that Prof. Sharpe’s insight on the biology of tooth formation will be useful to them as they endeavor to create hair follicle formation.  More scientific board members are to follow as well.

HairClone also welcomed four new hair transplant surgeons to their clinical partner program. Dr. Jerry Cooley, Dr. Ken Williams, Dr. James Harris, and Dr. Russell Knudsen round out that group. Dr.’s Williams, Harris, and Knudsen are said to be Founder Members of HairClone and Dr. Cooley is the first ‘Platinum’ member of the clinical partner program. I like the way things are going for HairClone and hope to hear more exciting announcements soon.

Aclaris Aims for AA Cure

Aclaris Therapeutics Inc. announced just before the start of this month that they have submitted an IND application (Investigational New Drug) to the US FDA for ATI-50001 which is Aclaris’ oral JAK Inhibitor for the treatment of alopecia areata. We knew this was coming and is a sign of good progress. Aclaris also has in its pipeline ATI-50002, a topical JAK Inhibitor for alopecia areata, and ATI-50003, a topical treatment for common pattern hair loss. Be on the lookout for news of those INDs in the future. Right now Aclaris is still presumably working on its topical formulations for both. It’s worth noting that optimizing a formulation of topical JAK inhibitors will be key to its success of treating common pattern hair loss. Angela Christiano did mention in an interview that hair follicles would need high local concentrations of JAK inhibitors in order for the JAK drugs to be effective at reversing pattern hair loss.

And that, my friends, is about it for now. Keep holding the vision of what you want to see and I’ll see you all back here with more good news to share.

Until next time, be well.