New Company: Yuva Biosciences
One of the leading researchers in the field of mitochondrial science has started a company to reverse the effects of human aging, including hair loss.
In July 2018, researchers at the University of Alabama, led by Keshav Singh PhD, published findings on a novel model for restoring mitochondrial function. The team found that by turning off a gene which causes mitochondrial dysfunction in mice, the mice were able to completely reverse signs of aging, including hair loss, gray hair, and skin wrinkles. The study was published in Nature and featured across the media. Since then, Dr. Singh founded the company Yuva Biosciences to translate this discovery into commercial applications. He was also joined by serial entrepreneur Greg Schmergel to serve as the chairman of Yuva Biosciences. The company marked its official launch recently in September 2019.
People waiting on hair loss cures are used to seeing research papers make a big hit in the news before, however, rarely do these discoveries get spun-out into companies. This holds good promise for Yuva and means that both scientists and investors saw great potential in the underlying science. It also means that rather than scientific journal entries, Yuva’s focus will be creating products that can make their way to consumers. For those new to the subject, you can read more about mitochondrial dysfunction here, it is recognized as one of the 9 hallmarks of human aging.
Latest Team Addition
Aubrey De Grey PhD
On September 10, 2019, Yuva Biosciences announced that Aubrey De Grey PhD joined the company’s Advisory Board. That name may sound familiar as Aubrey De Grey is widely considered the most famous anti-aging researcher in the world. He is a founder of the SENS Research Foundation and is credited with publishing the first comprehensive strategy for reversing human aging.
Interview With Keshav Singh PhD
I reached out to the founder of Yuva BioSciences to get more details on his company’s product development plans.
Keshav Singh PhD
FT: Your published study showed that by turning off POLG1 gene expression you were able to restore mitochondrial function which lead to a reverse of hair loss and wrinkles in mice. Was the original purpose of your research to discover a hair growth mechanism or was it aimed at something else?
KS: It was actually aimed at something else. The original purpose was to study the role of mitochondria dysfunction leading to cancer. We were pleasantly surprised that the mice showed skin wrinkles and loss of hair. Thus giving us a very important insight into how to prevent or reverse these conditions.
FT: Has your research progressed in this area since your publication last year?
KS: Yes, we are now screening compounds which can boost mitochondrial function and hence prevent hair loss or restore lost hair, and restore wrinkled skin to the normal state.
FT: Yuva Biosciences’ website mentions that the company will develop both cosmeceutical and pharmaceutical products. Which regulatory path will Yuva’s hair related products be developed for?
KS: We will develop both cosmeceuticals as well as drugs to treat hair loss. Currently, we have candidate compounds in the pipeline that are being tested.
FT: Finally, do you intend to have a research line focused on gray hair reversal technology as well?
KS: Yes, we will be studying this as our research in hair progresses. Additionally, we plan to develop agents to prevent chemotherapy-induced alopecia and premature aging in chemo patients.
Thanks to Dr. Singh for the interview. We now have another company with a great scientific network developing treatments for hair loss. It will be interesting to see what this new approach can do for hair and skin conditions.
Posted in Hair Growth Treatment, Yuva Biosciences
Any readers follow the anti-aging industry?
sweet, new addition to the field is always welcome
I’m glad they’re studying anti-aging compounds as old Yoda may be on his deathbed by the time Yuva comes to fruition! 🙂 Nice article Joe, just seems to be years away, hard for me to get overly excited at this point.
Hey thanks Yoda, but this could also be the company that adds a few years onto your life too 😉 I guess with any new company there is some time involved. Let’s see how the cosmeceutical route goes for them.
I’ve heard of Aubrey De Grey before, he thinks people can live to 1000 years starting now because of something called ‘longevity escape velocity.’ It basically means that if a technology comes out in the next 20 years that can add 20 years to your life, by the end of those 20 years there should be technology which can make you live 40 more years, and so on and so forth. If they can get people living anywhere close to those ranges they should be able to regrow some hair at some point.
@C companies that are working to treat hair loss and don’t have anything for sale really don’t deserve complete negativity
mitochondria ftw!………..i hope
This is interesting and thank u to admin for showing us. The scientist sounds like a serious figure, I just hope they are able to show in humans in timely manner.
The paper published in nature is very interesting good find. Also nice you were able to get an interview.
“Your published study showed that by turning off POLG1 gene expression you were able to restore mitochondrial function which lead to a reverse of hair loss and wrinkles in mice.”
This is a quote from your first question in the interview. What I think would also be very interesting to know if it works on old mice. He made the mice sick first and then reversed it (I know he did it for an other purpose). But for me the next logical step would be to see if this upregulation also works on mice that are bald and wrinkled because of age.
Because what he did we know kind of works in human too. Take chemo therapy as example. Through chemo u loose your hair and rapidly age. That is in most cases reversed after the chemo stops. And that hasn’t brought a hairloss cure nearer.
byebyehair: but chemotherapy inflicts toxicity into cells which are dividing if I am correct and that way it affects hair follicle cells which are trying to renew. This is why the hair falls. No one has tried to do the opposite of chemotherapy, which would be something like improving cell division ? But actually this approach by yuva may be similar to the opposite of chemo.
Just a guess but by adding something intrinsic to hair growth like mitochondrial function it should help to at least sustain healthy cell life/hair growth? What u think?
will we look young or be a head on a sick
what was that dwain?
Continually get news and exclusives that is not anywhere else good job. We need new companies and also shisedo results from trial, do you think its coming?
Off the back of the Instyle article some of you maybe interested in the article below on Elton John from a UK news paper providing transcripts from his new book. It interested me because he has never openly admitted wearing a wig. But he has now.
https://www.mirror.co.uk/3am/celebrity-news/elton-john-agonising-hair-transplant-20543997.amp
Interesting article Welsh, goes to show that even a celebrity has to deal with difficulties from hair transplants. But of course this was earlier in time when it was not so easy to discern between reputable clinics and the opposite. I guess being a celebrity has made it more acceptable for him to wear a hair system? It seems to me that people don’t care as much if you’re someone famous and wearing a toupee. They realize you have a need to wear it I guess. Any here have experience wearing a hair system?
Hi FT,
Interesting analogy. I feel there is a stigma against men artificially altering themselves, celebrity or not, which of course is the complete antithesis of women who have free rein to do what they want. I’ve watched a tone of hair system clips on youtube and in general, in the comments section women usually prefer the after and are positive about it and it’s actually the male commentators that say real men don’t do these things and criticize the whole thing. So it seems to me that it’s actually men that are creating the stigma against a feasible remedy. There are some dodgy ones but the good ones are undetectable (in my opinion). Usually, people say they can tell. But this is having just seen the dude having the thing stuck to his head. I don’t think I would do a hair system but I definitely wouldn’t 100% rule it out. Just my view. Fundamentally, hair is nothing more than a superficial thing that will improve confidence in superficial situations. If you plonked the perfect head of hair on every reader of this site, how life changing would it actually be? For some it would, but I would suggest that for the majority, the insecurities are more deep rooted than hair loss and the euphoria of getting hair would quickly dissipate. So I think we all need to work on our whole being to develop a greater sense of self esteem and if hair is still a desire after that maybe a hair system could be a good way of finding out if having hair will make that much of a difference to respective peoples lives. Having said all that I still want hair please 🙂
Hair systems are cool but the whole idea of having to keep maintaining it and changing it etc seems like a chore. Also, what if you decide to stop using it someday, you go from a luxurious head of hair to not having any. But yeah, I’d also like to get the hair and see how my life improves, my theory is it would be much better,
The longevity/anti-aging field is one of the hottest in biotech right now. All big millionaires are trying to figure out ways to live longer. A company named Unity is very popular and scientist David Sinclair is frequently mentioned. I think some of them are contemplating hair growth as well. Maybe Yuva can be the first or start a trend,
The aging process is surely very relevant for baldness and hair graying. So this approach is promissing in my opinion, especially for early forms of hairloss.
As folliclethought wrote: there are probably several hallmarks of aging. All of them are currently researched in order to find solutions. Some of these drugs are even in human trials. So it is absolutely possible, that there will be drugs, that will lead to a longer healthspan (later onset of aging diseases) and maybe even a longer lifespan … and of course this may also be relevant for a hair regeneration therapy, as e.g. the Yuva Biosciences approach has shown.
You will find a good roadmap with many interesting anti-aging drugs e.g. at https://www.lifespan.io/the-rejuvenation-roadmap/
Best regards
Andreas
hi andreas you seem very interested in these upcoming therapies and I noticed the link on your name to a website for hair gene research. is this still going on? do you know of any potential cures for hair loss in gene therapy or other? regards
Dear Dieter,
thanks for your comment and sorry for the late reply. I still think, that gene therapy has big potential to become a real cure (one time therapy as a permanent solution) for hairloss, especially in the early stages. Most cell therapy / hair cloning approaches would probably have to be repeated after several years, as the hairloss still goes on. Additionally a gene therapy could be less invasive (in the best case maybe even in the form of a gene creme e.g. targeted to the hair follicle stem cells). There has been some significant interest in this road of research in the 90s and early 2000 years, e.g. by Dr. Christiano, Dr. Cotsarelis and a small US biotech company. But during the last few years there has been very few research concerning a gene therapy approach, what I regret very much. I asked the folliclethought admin to contact the US biotech company (which still exists) … maybe we will get an Interview update from them in the foresseable future.
The website for hair gene research was the website of our German support group “Initiative for the advancement of hair gene research” (Infagen / http://www.infagen.de/english/index.html). We were a nice group for several years in the early 2000 years, but unfortunately we were probably ahead of our time and so we received a lot of scepticism and little support.
Now gene therapy has finally come of age and more and more money is flooding into this area. Additionally there are now several approved gene therapies for various diseases all around the world. As the principle of gene therapy is very similar for most diseases (deliver a therapeutic gene with a gene vector specifically to the targeted cell type), a gene therapy for hairloss prevention and/or hair regeneration is now more realistic than every, if there was enough well funded research (what is currently not the case unfortunately).
The Infagen has stopped active operations to support hair research with money and study participants many years ago … and personally I have a lot of other work in my personal life. I still follow hair research and other biomedical research news regularly, but I don´t have enough time to work actively for a hair research support group any more.
Maybe parts of our activities could also be done by folliclethought, e.g. posting the exact locations and contact addresses of clinical hair drug studies (the sooner the researchers find enough study participants, the sooner the clinical trials can be completed).
Best regards
Andreas
I think the gene research is amazing, maybe this can help one day. Thanks for this article. I look forward to hearing more about this company.
I think if they study the genetics of Aubrey’s beard they may find something first..did you see that thing?
Hoping that someday soon a cosmetic product is going to provide something worthwhile, between this and ngf, and the way-316606 topical from giuliani i think one of them is going to be pretty good even better than minoxidil. is anyone trying ngf?
Yes over 1 week in. Will update the admin if it’s working
thank you for this real news on hair growth companies. I hope one of them hurry up! I like that we have more cosmetic possibility in the next 1-2 years.
If this could at least sustain hair growth it would be worthwhile, doesn’t have to be a miracle to be useful. One of these new ones has to at least provide a new alternative for min or fin, right??
the story is same. folding screen companies are established, they claim to have found a number of treatments, investors receive their money to raise stocks, raises news ratings, publishes sites receive advertising, publishes open pages that do not work. The manager tell me if there is something wrong with what I say. Because we’re in 2020 now. Don’t talk to us. Be honest and tell me clearly. if you are an honest person, post this post and let everyone see and discuss
The purpose of the site is simple, to share the latest news on hair growth treatments. It’s not changed since I began the site in 2015. I don’t control the outcome of these treatments and companies but I do what I can to share about researchers/companies who are trying to create a cure. I understand you may be frustrated with the seeming stagnation of new cures actually making it to market, we all are to a certain degree, but there have been fair chances. Take the Fidia/Brotzu product, the whole world expected it to work decently but I guess it didn’t. It’s unfortunate but we’ve got to look to the next one. Giving up before the cure comes doesn’t make sense either..
gus gotta say I think it’s pretty cheap to come and try to complain about the news here. You realize is this is a website not a doctor’s office. Also compare the news you see here to the big newspapers who have stories out that ‘air pollutants’ is causing hair loss or that japanese cabbage will grow hair. I bet you’re not calling them to complain. For what the news if worth to us I think admin does a good job of relevant topics. Id rather know if a company is working on hair loss or not.
Gsgus,
I totally understand the skepticism and how frustrating it is to read some exciting news, get your hopes up anticipating the product release, only to be let down a year later.
I am sure Admin is prob screening out the blatantly obvious scam/fraud type news, but please realize it would take expertise in this field and a significant period of time and resources to review each and every project discussed on this site. It would require a team of people who are not getting paid to do the work. There is also no way someone could make a prediction a treatment currently being tested/researched will work on every individual and be safe in the future. Just something to keep in mind.
I think our Admin is doing a wonderful job sharing the news he finds and each person should decide for him/herself whether the company, news, and treatment discussed on this site will work for them and whether or not they want to continue spending time using this site.
Let’s face it we’re all going to continue checking news sites until the cure is on our head…or we give up. This is not the only site doing hair news but I think if you look around this content here is solid.
Look at even companies like allergan how much they spent on setipirpant trials? Thats millions of dollars to find out if it works! Scientists who do this stuff for a living and can’t tell until results are in so its almost funny to say one of us on the internet will know. Thats why we wait and see like them.
Hey thanks Lisa I appreciate the kind words. We are all looking for that improvement in treatment options to happen. If companies are still working towards it then I think it’s important that we know about it.
Very interesting. On a related note, Histogen appears to have entered a state of anti-development. I would swear they completed phase 2 trials on their hair stimulating complex back in 2012-2013, but according to their website they are set to enter phase 1(b) trials by the end of the year. Looking forward to the results of their phase 1(a) trials in a few years.
Yes, mp50f9 I saw that news about Histogen and I decided it was even too disappointing to post on the site, phase 1 in 2009 and then phase 1 in 2019. The injections could help so many people, including people who are undergoing hair transplants and the like. PRP + HSC also seems like a great combination.
Admin
I think the key to the baldness puzzle lies in two treatments.
● Sonic hedgehog
● Mitochondrial
● WAY-316606
These treatments should be highlighted because they are the treatment of baldness in the future
Just want to say big thanks to the admin for all he does with the best news on the net and even supports ppl like gus who find hair loss very hard to deal with. The credit is due. This site keeps me well informed and I know its up to the companies to deliver, I can;t ask FT to do news and be in the lab etc.
do they really want a cure since they spend millions on hair transplant all the tech machines must cost millions company goes out buys the tech and suddenly a lotion a pill comes out that cures baldness sad if true
Of course they want a cure, the company who makes one will get rich…other companies doing old practices will lose some customers but still maintain a lot of business. The first company that finally has something new that works will absolutely find a way to get it out.
SO MANY THINGS IN LIFE SO MANY DREAMS bring tech out and sell the patent and get millions for your idea its happened for years ……
Theres no chance someone sold away a patent for a hair loss cure and it’s sitting on a shelf somewhere collecting dust. It’s too valuable there’s not a company in the world that could make more money by hiding a cure than offering it to people. But its all good brah, no biggie
Hi Admin, can you check and give update for NOVAN Therapeutics? Topical Antiandrogen SB204 against Acne an Androgenetic Alopecia Shows in Phase 3 since half a year and sounds promising. (since Cassiopea we know treating Acne and Baldness can be done with the same drug).
https://novan.com/pipeline/
http://www.novan.com/files/8613/7398/9326/Topical_nitric_oxide_local_androgen_therapy.pdf
For 5 years, I followed many companies that the manager shared. I was very hopeful but there is really no cure for this problem anymore. always the same results. many companies lost.
that’s life bud, companies try and we live with the results. but if they’re still trying and new ones come I want to see what they have to offer. don’t throw away all your hope because they haven’t got it right yet. every step foward counts.
Gsgus, you’re like a ray of sunshine! 🙂
Still waiting for that grey hair cure. Whoever can crack that code will be making billions….I hope they crack it soon!
I agree, Jo.