HairClone Begins Follicle Banking Service

HairClone announced today by press release that it has received approval by the Human Tissue Authority (HTA) in the UK to begin banking patients’ hair follicles. I have also received direct information regarding the status of HairClone’s prototype cell therapy and when injections could become available to patients.

Some statistics about HairClone’s banking procedure have been updated since we last heard. According to the media publications today, HairClone intends to extract about 100 hair follicles from a patient to be put into deep freeze or cryopreservation. These follicles will then be utilized to create cellular injections in the future by dissecting a certain part of the follicle, called the dermal papilla, and then multiplying those cells in culture. The multiplied cells are then re-injected to patient’s scalp in a familiar scenario. The initial procedure of banking one hundred follicles will cost around £2,000 and then an annual fee of £100 to store the follicles.

Direct From HairClone

Beyond the information that was announced in the mainstream today, Paul Kemp has given me some insight into the current activities of HairClone to share with the readers. First off, Paul wanted to mention the important bullet points of the HairClone procedure:

It will be available to both men and women

Banking will allow multiple injection treatments from one initial surgery

Patients with banked follicles will be first in line for cell expansion when treatments are authorised

The follicles remain the property of the patient so could be used in other treatments if the patient prefers

HairClone tells me that it in order to gain regulatory approval with the HTA for banking the company had to carry out extensive validation studies to show that they could reproducibly extract human follicles, cryopreserve them, ship, test, and thaw them, then extract viable cells that could be culture expanded.

Paul Kemp, CEO of HairClone details “we first submitted the licence application in January and then there was a series of questions some of which needed additional work but the result is an incredibly well understood robust process so the time was well spent.” I asked Paul if this meant that HairClone had to provide cultured DP cells in their test with the HTA to which he responded:

“Yes we did have to show that we could culture the cells to a level that we considered would be used for a treatment. We have done that repeatedly on numerous samples”



I also asked Paul another question which I believe has been lingering on the minds of many readers, does HairClone have a cellular protocol in place? He confirmed, yes HairClone does have a cell culturing protocol, in other words a first generation cell therapy is waiting in the wing now.

When Injections Could Begin

On to the important stuff that everyone wants to know about: the cellular injections. A point of emphasis, Paul tells me that HairClone is not permitted by the HTA to offer injection treatments at this time. In order to offer injections HairClone would have to create a GMP licensed facility which would be approved by the HTA. GMP certification basically means the facility would have to adhere to very high quality of standards.

It takes a considerable amount of money to develop a GMP facility and HairClone was planning on using the money from its crowdfunding campaign to fund this endeavor, however that campaign did not meet its goal. HairClone is now obliged to go the venture capital route to raise funds, which is sometimes a more drawn out process. Had HairClone been able to meet its crowdfunding goal back in February they would be in position to begin injections by the end of 2019.

First Patient Has Banked Follicles

Paul Kemp also tells me that the first patient has banked their hair follicles with HairClone as of July 30th and it was none other than himself. This is interesting! We’ve got a CEO who is set to be the first patient treated with the multiplied DP cell therapy injections. Paul said he wanted to time the procedure and understand from a patient perspective what was involved.

To recap, HairClone is now allowed to bank patients’ hair follicles, they have a first generation cell therapy in place, and injections can begin once they have developed a GMP system for cell processing and HTA authorization. This is certainly interesting information and puts HairClone among the forefront of companies who could potentially be in the clinic someday.

I’m looking forward to readers’ feedback on the news especially Paul being first patient to bank follicles. Based on previous cell therapy companies are you hopeful for HairClone?



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