Histogen

At the bottom of the article they are have some new info on hair growth trials.

Human Tissue Startup ‘Putting the Band Together Again’
Bruce V. Bigelow 11/25/08
San Diego’s Advanced Tissue Sciences tried for 14 years to develop living-tissue patches for healing burns, wounds and chronic sores. But the business went into bankruptcy liquidation in late 2002, a victim of regulatory delays and more than $300 million in debt.

Since then, former CEO Gail Naughton says she’s been invited to speak many times about the hurdles that Advanced Tissue Sciences was unable to overcome and what she would have done differently. “After talking about what I would do differently a number of times,” Naughton says, “I decided to go out and actually do it.”

The result is Histogen, a San Diego-based life sciences company that Naughton founded last year. Naughton says the technology underlying Advanced Tissue Sciences has been reborn—with significant advances—and that Histogen intends to avoid the business pitfalls that crippled the predecessor company.

“Many of us worked for Gail at Advanced Tissue Sciences,” says Robert Kellar, Histogen’s vice president of research and development. “So we joke around by saying ‘We’re putting the band together again.’ ”

After raising more than $5.3 million from private investors in May, Naughton says Histogen plans to raise another $1.4 million from investors by the end of the year. The startup also has secured a $1.4 million loan.

A key difference at the new company is the creation of a subsidiary, Histogen Aesthetics, which is adapting the in-house expertise in fibroblasts, the cells that form connective tissue, to develop skin and hair care products. By focusing at the outset on the cosmetics, dermatology, and plastic surgery industries, Naughton says Histogen can generate immediate revenue to support the long-term development of living tissue skin grafts and other medical products that require a protracted regulatory approval process.

The company’s first cosmetics product is called ReGenica, a liquid made from fibroblast-secreted proteins, growth factors, and other products. It is intended for use in anti-aging skin treatments and to promote healing after cosmetic laser skin resurfacing.

Last week, Histogen said it also plans to evaluate whether ReGenica injected into the scalp will stimulate hair regrowth in a clinical trial of 24 patients. “Our hypothesis is that it helps to stimulate resident stem cells to become hair follicles,” Kellar says.

Naughton says Histogen already has used its expertise in culturing and growing fibroblast cells to develop products derived from human tissue cells that can be used as a growth medium by stem cell researchers. With such products already generating sales, she says Histogen can generate cash to offset at least some losses it expects to endure while it spends years working toward getting approval to sell its therapeutics products.

It was that prolonged march through the desert that eventually killed Advanced Tissue Sciences, which endured a three-year FDA delay amid mounting debts in getting the company’s Dermagraft skin patch for diabetic ulcers to market. Even after getting regulatory approval, Naughton said the reimbursement rate that insurers set for the treatment covered only a fraction of the company’s actual cost to make the patch. Today reimbursement rates are more favorable, Naughton says.

Histogen intends to use its same proprietary human “extra-cellular matrix” to develop a variety of other medical products—coatings for orthopedic implants and stents, patches for repairing torn shoulder ligaments and other tissue, and even “retentive” enemas for treating sores in the large intestine and Crohn’s Disease.

“So basically we’ve learned and we’ve brought the best and brightest people back at Histogen,” Naughton says. “The team that did it before is back together again, with decades of experience.”

Histogen Announces Start of Hair Regrowth Clinical Evaluation
SAN DIEGO, November 20, 2008 - Histogen, Inc., a regenerative medicine company developing solutions based on the products of newborn fibroblasts, today announced the start of the Company’s first human clinical evaluation of ReGenicaTM for hair regrowth. The primary objective of the study is to evaluate safety in the clinical application of the ReGenica product.

ReGenica is a proprietary liquid formula created by the culturing of newborn fibroblasts in an embryonic-like environment, and then harvesting the naturally secreted growth factors, anitoxidants and other synergistic bioproducts that are produced. It is the first naturally stabilized and bioactive formulation of wnt proteins and natural cofactors, which are thought to act in the formation of new hair follicles.

Histogen’s in-vitro and preclinical research to date has shown ReGenica to be safe, and has indicated the complex’s ability to increase hair growth and new follicle formation. Based on the results of preliminary research, and the potential of ReGenica as a hair regrowth treatment, Histogen has moved forward with this outside-U.S. study to more rapidly obtain human safety data which will allow the Company to progress with product development.

We are excited to be on schedule with the initiation of our first human clinical evaluation of ReGenica for hair growth," said Dr. Gail Naughton, CEO and Chairman of the Board for Histogen. “We look forward to the results of this preliminary safety evaluation, which we can parlay into further studies.”

The ReGenica study, which began today, will be a double-blind, placebo-controlled, randomized single site study. Dr. Craig Ziering, renowned hair transplant surgeon and founder of Ziering Medical, is serving as Principal Investigator on the study with Dr. David Perez-Meza as Sub-Investigator. Results of this first human hair regrowth product clinical evaluation will be released by Histogen in the first half of 2009.

About Histogen
Histogen, launched in 2007, seeks to redefine regenerative medicine by developing a series of high value products without the use of embryonic stem cells or animal products. Through Histogen’s proprietary bioreactors that mimic the embryonic environment, newborn fibroblasts are encouraged to naturally produce the vital proteins and growth factors from which the company has developed its rich product portfolio. Histogen has two product families - ExceltrixTM, Histogen’s human Extracellular Matrix (ECM) and ReGenica, Histogen’s proprietary liquid formula.