Companies working on induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) therapies face a dilemma automating their processes due to a lack of tailored equipment. That’s the opinion of Cenk Sumen, PhD, chief technology officer at Stemson Therapeutics, which is developing a treatment for hair loss and currently uses a relatively manual manufacturing process. However, they hope to implement an automated and closed manufacturing system over the next couple of years, Sumen explains.
However, one challenge, he says, is obtaining suitable bioprocessing equipment when, unlike more established cell therapies, iPSCs only make up a tiny percentage of the market.
It doesn’t mean they can’t move forward; it just means the treatment will have to be done manually at first, which means it would be expensive at first.
@Lucky I dont see this as bad news in terms of the fundamentals of their research, it’s just challenges in the ordinary course of business, you can’t expect progress to be made in a straight line fashion, there will be roadblocks.
The most important question is the timeframe which doesn’t look good based on the latest video interview posted by Roger , it may be many years away.
It doesn’t take a genuius to realize that the demand is there so it;s a bit odd that biotech and pharmaceutical companies have no interest in developing a cure for hair loss. I am sure we would have a cure or at least a very effective treatment by now if biotech firms give hair loss treatment a priority.
Well, as far as I know Allergan is the first major biotech to invest in any kind of cell based hair growth reaearch (Stemson).
All the previous investors in failed startups were from hair replacement and hair pieces (Aderans/Hair Club), cosmetics (Shiseido), or just funded with a variety of small investors.
Many very intelligent people have taken a crack at this and failed. I noticed the guy from Stemson was vague and wouldn’t give a timeline for when this product would reach final development. The cure is as elusive as ever.
Don’t for yourselves! They are not even close to solving this . Follica repeat? If they could grow hair successfully, they would start clinical trials immediately to prove it works. In fact, they are thousands of millionaires who pay a million dollars and more to have a full head of hair. I promise you that if this so called cure worked, automation will follow. This is a 10 billion dollar industry. They give a lot of false hope to keep themselves in a job. Something is missing that they are not telling. The day they starting clinical trials and send out pictures of their success is the day we can say a cure has arrived. Until then it is just smoke and mirrors.
They know that they can make the stem cells form into new hair follicles, but at this point they still have a way to go to control direction, angle, density, and other esthetic factors (like duplicating the “whorl” at the crown of the head which was mentioned in a few articles on Stemson). All that stuff is a lot more complicated than it seems. You might ask, why are those “minor” details so important, if they know they can grow follicles why don’t they just start trialing it now?
I think the answer is, they know the FDA won’t let them even start clinical trials if these miscellaneous issues aren’t better worked out.
Dr Fukuda’s group at Yokohama National University may actually be ahead of Stemson. Fukuda announced clinical trials starting in 2023 while Stemson’s CEO said that they’re not sure when their trials will start.
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