HairClone Launches Crowdfunding Campaign
(Update: Minimum investment in HairClone is now £100)
HairClone, a UK based company working on cellular hair restoration therapies, has announced the launch of its public crowdfunding campaign today. Please enjoy the introductory HairClone crowdfunding video below.
To launch the campaign HairClone has teamed up with Capital Cell, a European based equity crowdfunding company which specializes in life sciences. It’s a great fit for HairClone. Equity crowdfunding works by allowing members of the lay public to invest in a company, and in doing so, become owners of shares in that company. Typically, early stage investing in companies is only available to “accredited” investors who meet certain financial criteria. Through the equity crowdfunding campaign with Capital Cell anyone can become an investor in HairClone.
Here are a few of the important details from HairClone’s crowdfunding campaign:
- HairClone is raising £300,000 through this campaign.
- Minimum investment in HairClone is £100 (Roughly $128 currently)
- HairClone has a current valuation of £3,000,000 (~$ 3.89M)
- In total, 9.09% of the company’s value is offered through this campaign.
- Investments will be used to setup HairClone’s deep-freeze follicle banking service.
I’m happy to see this campaign officially launched and I wish HairClone much success in this endeavor. Please comment below and share your thoughts if you decide to invest in this crowdfunding campaign.
Posted in Hair Cloning, Hair Growth Treatment, HairClone
Exciting and encouraging. Just wish I was ten years younger, as I really need this technology now! Am considering an investment. However, one thing I don’t quite follow: what this company is trying to achieve appears to be the same as what is currently being developed in Japan (i.e. Riken and Sheisedo)?? If that is so and Japan gets there first, won’t those companies come to dominate this market with their patents? Apologies if I have missed something obvious. Though I note the crowd funding is specifically to form a follicle bank. One further question, if follicles are banked but would have miniaturized in the near future in any event, then am not sure what the point is in freezing them now. Can anyone answer this for me? thanks.
They could develop their own method to achieve what RepliCel/Shusheido is achieving or hope to reach an agreement for rights to use the patent. Otherwise they could simply make money from hair follicle banking, as they generate £2,000 upfront and £100 per annum of storage that way. Despite the fact that hair follicles at the back of the head remain unaffected by hair follicle miniaturisation.
I am afraid that I’m not optimistic about this company as even I’ve not lost that much hair from the back of my head. I think they’re trying to replicate the success of cord blood banking, but for hair follicles. Except cord blood is completely different from regular blood. Whereas hind hair follicles are identical to scalp hair follicles, except immune to androgenic alopecia.
Dear Balram
Thanks for your comments. Please see my answer to Alan J above for some responses. There are some similarities between cord blood banking and what we are doing but some very important differences.
1) the case of cord blood banking all the banking companies that I am aware of just bank the cells and they are relying on others to develop treatments that may use the cells at some point. Some treatments are already available for some diseases, but an extremely small percentage of patients whose tissue is banked require their cells and the banks are really an “insurance policy” for patients. This is entirely different from our bank where we expect the vast majority of patients who bank follicles are either suffering from hair loss or come from families with strong history of hair loss
2) “Hind” hair follicles, although on the scalp, are not identical to frontal scalp hair follicles. This is the whole reason hair transplants work and why we and the others all feel that hair cloning will work.
3) I assure you that our aim is to use the revenues generated from banking to accelerate the research and development of a treatment system. As Scientists and Clinicians we really want to be involved in the development of therapies and not tissue bankers. Even when a treatment is available, banking will still be useful as it will allow multiple treatments to be produced from the one surgical collection of follicles
regards
Paul Kemp
Hi Alan
Thanks for the questions. All the Companies involved in this area have the same basic concept which is, take follicles from non balding regions, disassemble them, expand particular cell populations in culture, formulate them in a particular way and then return them to balding regions to . Although the specific way each group does this could be covered by patents, the overall concept goes back over 40 years to the work of Oliver and Jahoda and cannot be patented. The team at HairClone has a huge amount of experience with cell treatments through working at Intercytex and Aderans Research Institute and we know that a successful treatment will depend as much on surgery as on the science. This is why we are creating our Clinical Partner network of some of the leading hair transplant surgeons on the planet.
We believe successful treatments will be created through a combination of medical and scientific innovation and don’t feel that there will be a single “one size fits all”. Different treatments and combinations depending on the patient and degree of hair loss will find their place.
As to your second question, the follicles that we will bank are from non balding regions and are biologically different from those miniaturising follicles in balding regions and they wouldn’t be expected to miniaturise in the future. That is the whole basis behind hair transplantation, taking follicles from non balding regions and transplanting them in balding regions. That is a one for one exchange, hair cloning aims to have the cells from a few hairs treat or replace numerous miniaturising hair
Freezing follicles now has several advantages
1) Although they wouldn’t miniaturise, these follicle cells will still age like all tissues of the body. Freezing now would “stop the clock” on these cells
2) The revenue from patients who bank follicles now will be supporting and accelerating the development of the treatments and they will be first in line when treatments are ready
3) We will recognise this help by discounting the banking charge from the next step of expanding the cells
I hope this answers your question, please let me know if you need more information. The crowdfunding has started well and we hope that trend continues and others join us at this early stage.
Regards
Paul
Hi Paul,
many thanks for the response. One further question. I have been losing my hair very slowly since I was 24 and am now 57. I have the classic horse shoe pattern, except that like quite a few men the horse shoe itself is also to some extent affected by the process: i.e. the hair at the sides (especially) and the narrow strip at the back are not as thick as they used to be. When my father died in his mid eighties he had very thin diffuse hair left at the sides and back, though I noticed there was one small patch that seemed to be totally unaffected by the process. I notice guys who have hair in the horse shoe, but it is diffuse, not dense, but it nevertheless seems to persist. Is it possible to say whether the processes you are developing still give hope to people like me? At the moment I have a narrow patch above my neck which seems relatively unaffected, but very hard to say how this will look in five or ten years. I assume there is simply no way of saying in advance which follicles will be affected and which will not? i.e. we cannot yet look at follicles and detect whether they are progammed to minaturize? Am trying to cling onto some hope! Grateful for your thoughts. Best wishes Alan
Hi again Alan
Thanks for your response which actually goes to the crux of what we are working to do. HairClone is funding a PhD student in Claire Higgins’ lab who is looking into just the question that you ask “can we look at follicles and detect whether they are programmed to miniaturise”. So far her work is looking very promising and the goal is for us to be able to test the follicle cells that we use and make sure they are ones not affected by androgenic alopecia. We are also trying to dissect out androgenic responses vs simple ageing and this is one of the reasons behind the follicle banking which is designed to enable people just beginning to notice hair thinning or those worried about it because of family history to “bank” hairs as young as possible which we expect will stop the clock on their ageing.
When Colin Jahoda first showed the potential of dermal papilla cells, you and I were in our 20s !and several groups (including 5 of us at HairClone) have worked hard over the years to translate this into the clinic by raising large amounts of venture capital and using it in large single protocol clinical trials which although showing promise have not shown the same amount of efficacy seen in mice. We at HairClone have come to realise that success will require very close and continual interaction with scientists, clinicians and patients in order to evolve a treatment. This is the main reason we launched the crowdfunding, to enable people to join us and create a community that develops the therapy together and finally gets the job done!
what i do not understand is that dr jahoda injected his own dermal papilla cells into his wife’s arm and that gave hair. I do not understand why we do not have the right to be injected dermal taste buds of another person since that is what Dr. jahoda did
Dr. Jahoda surgically implanted several intact dermal papilla units into his wife’s skin and just one or two hairs were formed. Dermal papilla are intact structures containing 1,000-2,000 dermal papilla cells). Although this was an amazing scientific result, it produced fewer hairs than were removed so wouldn’t be clinically relevant. I don’t know what approvals he needed to do this experiment but I do know that in order to produce a clinically effective treatment we will have to culture expand (clone) the dermal papilla cells. When that is done either with a patients own cells or someone else the regulators all class the result as a “medicinal product”. I will go into more detail later as to what steps need to be taken in order to be able to provide a medicinal product to a patient.
I hope this helps
regards
Paul
What is the difference between HairClone and Shiseido? Do you you have a Japanese Friend who will participate on the Seminar in End of Novembre with Tsuji and Shiseido?
Hi Lee
I think that we are all working on variations of the same concepts as I mentioned to Alan J above. At HairClone we have been involved in development of Cell Therapies for many years and we can see that there are opportunities for all the treatment systems under development whether they involve dermal papilla cells, dermal cup cells, epithelial cells or “organ rudiment” structures. What is exciting is that several groups re working on this at the same time which increases the chances of treatments becoming available suited perhaps for different situations and degrees of hair loss
regards
Paul
Hi admin,
Im wondering if you know if were expecting any new information from the International Conference on Aesthetic Medicine beginning tomorrow? Or any other upcoming conferences.
Thanks
Hi Zach
We aren’t attending the International Conference on Aesthetic Medicine. We will be at EHRS in Barcelona next year
regards
Paul
Hi Doc,
I live in India and i want to contribute towards crowd-funding. Please can you tell me the process in simple terms and how also it will benefit me, being away from U.K?
Hi Ayaan
Crowdfunding is open to anyone from around the world which is very exciting. Just go the the Capital Cell website https://capitalcell.co.uk/campaign/hairclone/ and follow the instructions there. Your funding will give you equity in HairClone and you will benefit financially if HairClone becomes successful (though there are risks that are explained by Capital Cell). Once we are a little more established we want to find high quality surgeons in India to join the Clinical Partner network to help develop the treatment.
Hi Dr Kemp,
Thank you very much for taking some time to answer some of our questions.
I have a question about hair follicle neogenesis. Do you think the growth phase of the new hair follicles will have the same length as any healthy scalp hair. Do you think it could be a concern in the future?
Thank you
Sam
Hi Sam
Thanks for your question. People ask a lot of questions like this as but we just can’t answer those at the moment. If the growth phase was shorter but still long enough to generate cosmetically useful hair then that wouldn’t be a concern. A very small fraction of people let scalp hair shafts grow without cutting them for their entire growth cycle. The main function of follicle neogenesis will be to cover the scalp and I am sure treatments will evolve and improve with time and the skill of the hair transplant surgeons and cell culture scientists. But we won’t even get to the first treatment without funding. People have had to stop in the past not because they weren’t making progress but because they weren’t able to raise the funds to continue.
(Link edited)
admin
The opinion of the doctors and the opinion of the members of this controversial product
Ahmed, controversial product links as you say are not advised here. Many thanks for your continued support of Follicle Thought.
Hi Paul,
The DP injections that are slated to be available next year. Any idea the efficacy of these injections? Will they stop further loss and gain a bit back? Only stop further loss? Or something like prp, help a bit, but not really be a solution to stopping hair loss.
Thanks for taking the time to answer these questions!
Thanks
Hi Zach
I really wish I could very easily answer your questions! But as you can see below, there is now easy answer at this stage.
We are determined that HairClone is always evidence based and will not make unsubstantiated claims about treatment efficacy (Apart from the fact that you can get into all sorts of regulatory and legal problems if you do so). But I can say what we hope will happen with DP injections and explain the evidence so far. I assume from your question that you are focussing on the rejuvenate aspect of DP injections.
We wouldn’t have started HairClone if we believed that the treatment would as you say “help a bit, but not really be a solution to stopping hair loss”!!
The data supporting what we are planning to do is this:
1) It is well known that there is a link between DP cell number and follicle shaft diameter
2) Androgenic alopecia is caused by a “miniaturisation” of the hair follicle between hair cycles and this coincides with a reduction in the size of the DP and therefore presumably DP cell number
3) Work from Bruce Morgan’s lab shows that DPs are able to control their number and “recover” if only a portion of the DP is removed.
4) Work by McElwee has shown that injected DP cells (in mice) are able to migrate to the DP region and increase hair shaft diameter and length
5) Clinical data from Intercytex, Aderan’s Research Institute and Replicel all show some indication (and I need to stress that at this stage it is an indication only) that injected follicle cells (not just DP cells have been examined) are able to “rejuvenate” miniaturising follicles and increase the hair shaft diameter, though it isn’t known yet whether this is due what was seen in mice in 4)
6) Higgins et all has shown that DP cells change their “profile” when expanded in culture and cease to make proteins characteristic of DP cells (which is not really surprising when you are now asking them to make new DP cells instead!) but that this change is not permanent and they are able to revert to more DP-like cells
Put together, this is all very encouraging and the reason we started HairClone with what we see as a different strategy to others
If you have been following HairClone since the start, then you know that our concern has always been that although DP cells (and other follicle cells) may have the ability to rejuvenate miniaturing follicles, there are many unknowns, both in terms of the treatment itself, the way it is delivered to the scalp and the best type of patients to benefit, that needs to be sorted out before a well understood, efficacious treatment is developed. Trying to answer these complex and interacting issues through massively expensive and time consuming clinician trials has so far not proven to be the most effective route to a therapy which is why we created our clinical partner network with the aim that they can iteratively develop a treatment protocol using their skills in medical innovation and they are very keen to start.
But even though we are working very economically, we still do need funds to carry out this work which is one reason we started the crowd-funding which will allow anyone both to support the work, obtain shares in HairClone and then benefit when we “make hair loss history”
I hope that helps
Regards
Paul
Hello Paul, there are 2 types of people I see in the hair loss community those who want to maintain there hair and those that have lost and want their hair back. Correct me anywhere , I assume that your business will cater more toward the former since you aren’t actually proliferating follicles your proliferating cells to be injected in hopes to provide maintenance specifically and regrowth as maybe a side quest. Currently I do not believe this type of therapy will do much for slick bald areas or return sufferers from a horseshoe to full density but I could see this as halting the miniaturization of the follicles and providing some regrowth. If there is evidence to the contrary I will change my mind not just some regrowth though I’m talking filling in balds spots completely.
Currently Minoxodil and Finasteride help people achieve maintenance and even some regrowth, the same effects I would expect from your treatment at small % of your projected price. I know that some people experience nasty side effects from these drugs but to my knowledge this is a minority and some take these drugs for years with great success. I can see this minority who’ve experienced ill effects with these drugs willing to pay the price of this treatment if they can afford it but how will you entice the other majority who pay for cheap 5% Kirkland with good results?
Thanks.
Log
Hi again Zach
You are right that there are different types of patients with different degrees of hair loss and as you say different patients want different things. As I mentioned in my last reply, Androgenic Alopecia is caused by miniaturisation of the affected follicles and that can begin before there is any visible appearance of hair loss. Then as this miniaturisation progresses, hair thinning becomes apparent and patients go through the classic Norwood (or Ludwig in females) patterns of hair loss. Eventually these miniaturising follicles are lost completely resulting in totally bald patches of scalp. Medications can in some patients slow this process of miniaturisation and can cause reversal in a subset of these patients as long as the medication continues to be taken. I see that a little like the medications holding back the dam of miniaturisation. When the patient stops taking the medication the dam breaks and hair loss can be rapid.
We have two targets, the first is the miniaturising follicle itself and as I mentioned our aim is to rejuvenate these follicles, replacing the lost cells and reverting the hair shaft back to its original dimensions. Taken on an individual hair basis, it would be seen as “regrowing the hair”. Depending upon the degree of hair loss when the patient begins treatment, this could be seen as stopping hair loss in patients where miniaturisation was just beginning and the appearance of thinning hair was not very apparent, or reversing hair loss in patients where miniaturisation had progressed to a point where it was apparent. Unlike medications, this treatment would not need to be taken daily.
Our second target is the bare scalp itself in patients where the miniaturisation approach had progressed to a point where there were large bald areas and the follicles had gone beyond the point where they could be rejuvenated. Repair of this would require the creation of new hair follicles which is a much more challenging project. We are working on this though, in part through the work being carried out by the PhD student in Claire Higgins’ lab who we are funding. There is evidence that new human hairs can be grown by cell treatment but the efficiency of this regrowth is not yet sufficient. Others are also working on this approach (See the above article from Invitro hair for example) and the more scientists working on this the faster a clinically relevant approach will be developed.
Depending upon the degree of hair loss and the amount of transplantable hair available, the clinical partners feel that for some patients this regrowth could be used in conjunction with hair transplantation to expand the bald area that could be covered. We don’t feel that there will be a one size fits all treatment and the two treatments I have described will evolve as hair transplant surgeons learn how they fit with their individual patients and possibly used in a treatment pathway with other therapies.
Cell therapy will not be an easy option as each patients’ treatment will have to be manufactured on an individual basis. We do feel however that for some patients these cell based therapies will be the only option in order to maintain or regain a full head of hair. This development work will all require funding which is where our crowd funding comes in. Early investors expect good returns on their investment to offset the risks and we thought it would be good to give interested members of the public (and potential patients) these opportunities rather than venture capitalists.
I hope this helped and let me know your thoughts
regards
Paul
Hi Paul, thanks for all the helpful information. I live in the UK and was just wondering how I could get considered for any trials that might t arise in the next year or so? I have never been clear how people get onto trials. I realize we are a little way off that, but I would not want to miss the boat in terms of being considered. thanks Andrew
Hi Andrew
Thanks for your comment, sorry it has taken some time to reply. The best way would be to contact our Medical Director, Dr Bessam Farjo directly at his clinic (https://www.farjo.com) and let him know you are interested in HairClone and he can discuss it with you.
regards
Paul
Mentioning again here that the HairClone crowdfunding campaign has changed the minimum investment to £100.
Hello Paul, as I understand the bank of follicles, the follicles are taken from the part of the skull where hair has not been lost. My question is what happens to women given that their pattern of hair loss is different? Are there healthy follicles in women who are eligible to be kept in the bank? If so, how do you detect that these follicles are healthy?
Dear Antonio
That is an extremely good question and I am really pleased that you have raised the issue of androgenic alopecia in women as we see that there is a huge need there. As you say, the pattern of hair loss in women is more diffuse which makes them less suitable as hair transplant patients. Their treatment options are few and although a large percentage of women suffer from hair loss at some point in their lives, less than 20% of hair transplant patients are female.
Although the pattern of affected and non affected follicles is more distinct in men, it is not always the case that hairs at the back of a man’s head are unaffected by androgenic alopecia. However, there are genetic differences between affected and non affected follicles and we plan to take advantage of this in the treatments that we are developing although I can’t go into detail here. Our aim is to use culture expanded (cloned) cells that are not inhibited by androgens in both the mens’ and women’ treatments.
regards
Paul
Then, just to confirm, there are follicles not affected by androgenic alopecia in women (depends on each individual) and your aim is to use culture expanded (cloned) cells that are not inhibited by androgens in these treatments.
Hi again Antonio
Yes you are correct, that is our aim. However we first need to develop the treatment and then work with our network of clinical partners to demonstrate its clinical effect. All this will need funding which is why we have launched this crowdfunding campaign
regards
Paul
does the treatment also for gray hair?
Hi
Thanks for your question. Our goal with the current treatments that we are developing are focussed firstly on rejuvenating miniaturising hair from what we know from pre-clinical and clinical work already carried out this will retain the colour of the miniaturising hair but improve the diameter and length of the hair shaft and should therefore work with grey hair (I must stress that we haven’t yet tested this). A later treatment is aimed at generating new hair follicles.
Neither of these will include melanocytes which are the cells responsible for providing the colour to hair.
I hope that this answers your question
regards
Paul
Paul, just checking here, did you intend to write ” this will retain colour of the miniaturising hair but improve the diameter…” or did you actually intend to write “this will not retain the colour of miniaturising hair but improve the diamater…”?
Hi
Although we obviously don’t know for sure until we try it, the data would suggest that the rejuvenation of the hair follicles will retain the colour of the miniaturising hair follicle as the melanocytes will not be affected. So if the hair is coloured the indication is that it will stay coloured and if it is grey, it will stay grey. However the intention is that the hair shaft diameter will be increased.