By Gail Dutton – Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News
Stemson Therapeutics is harvesting patient cells, generating and differentiating iPSCs, and pro-ducing dermal papilla cells in abundance
Hair loss can be distressing, even devastating, but it isn’t considered a serious health problem. Consequently, hair loss has been addressed by relatively few biotech companies. One of those companies is Stemson Therapeutics. It is pioneering the use of induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) to regenerate hair. The company says that its iPSC-based approach is well positioned to meet the enormous market demand for solutions to scarring alopecia, androgenic alopecia, and chemotherapy-induced alopecia.
“When you are experiencing the degeneration of tissue that manifests as hair loss, the cells that are responsible for generating hair are dying,” says Geoff Hamilton, CEO of Stemson. “The logical approach is to replace or recapitulate those lost cells. That’s where stem cells come into play.”
Although some scientists have tried to cultivate adult follicle-derived cell populations to generate transplant material, that approach hasn’t been especially effective. Stemson has a different approach, one that relies on iPSCs. “They give us a better and more reliable, robust, and scalable way of generating the source population of the highly specialized cells that are needed to grow hair follicles,” Hamilton asserts.