San Diego’s Stem Cell Startup Reports Hair-Regrowth Results

Xconomy San Diego —

San Diego-based Histogen CEO Gail Naughton is presenting encouraging preliminary results today at a stem cell conference from the startup’s first human trial of its hair regrowth treatment, ReGenica.

The company says it is in the midst of conducting a five-month clinical trial somewhere outside the United States to assess the safety of ReGenica. After 12 weeks, the company says, patients using the treatment show increased, thicker hair growth, with no adverse reactions. ReGenica is an injectable liquid product made by culturing cells from newborns and collecting growth factors, so-called wnt proteins, and other molecules that the cells secrete. In mice, wnt proteins are involved in triggering stem cells in the skin to form hair, according to Histogen’s press release.

About 25 subjects enrolled in the Phase 1 trial. They are all men, from 18 to 45 years old, with varying stages of male-pattern baldness.

Naughton is reporting the results at the 4th Annual Stem Cell Summit in New York. Histogen says its goal in conducting the study outside the country is to obtain human safety data for the under-the-scalp injections more rapidly, and thereby speed development of the product. Naughton told me in November her early focus is developing products for cosmetics, dermatology, and plastic surgery industries to generate revenue needed to support long-term development of living tissue skin grafts and other products.