Call Us On 0207 152 4473

For a FREE Hair Assessment Call

PLEASE CALL 0207 152 4473


Hair-loss firm Follica nets $5.5M in funding round.

05.01.2008 in HAIR LOSS SCIENCE

A new startup devoted to treating hair loss in men and women has secured $5.5 million in first-round venture funding.

Follica Inc. in Boston attracted funding from Interwest Partners and existing investor and co-founder PureTech Ventures.

Follica plans to use the money to fund a clinical proof-of-concept study. The medical device company believes its technology can treat androgenetic alopecia, which is a form of male and female pattern hair loss that occurs on some men and women.

Follica’s technology, licensed from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, is intended to generate new hair follicles.

Follica co-founder Dr. Rox Anderson will serve as the company’s scientific advisory board chairman. He is a professor of dermatology at Harvard Medical School and director of the Wellman Center for Photomedicine at Massachusetts General Hospital.

Anderson is also credited with advancing the science in laser hair removal.

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

portfolio1.gif

no comment

Health Story: More Kiwi women are experiencing hair loss in their 20s and 30s, and experts say the contraceptive pill and stress are partly to blame.

01.01.2008 in FEMALE HAIR LOSS

Women are showing up in increasing numbers at hair-loss clinics around the country.

At three major centres, female patients now outnumber men.

Trichologists, who deal with problems related to the scalp and hair, say their female patients are getting younger.

They cite several factors as the reasons, including increasingly stressful lifestyles and some types of contraceptive pill, as well as diet and a parallel increase in the auto-immune and ovarian diseases that can cause hair to begin falling out.

Like men, a percentage of women were genetically prone to hair loss as they aged, David Salinger, a certified member of the International Association of Trichologists and vice-president and registered member of the Institute of Trichologists (UK), told the Herald on Sunday.

Now based in Australia, he said the number of women experiencing hair loss had “definitely” increased over the 25 years he had been practising. “There are a lot more younger women getting genetic thinning at the top and front of the scalp, whereas years ago you would see that only in women after menopause.”

He said he now saw “10 younger women to every one post-menopausal woman” and believed some types of contraceptive pill could trigger genetic hair loss at an earlier age.

The worst culprits were the combination contraceptive pills containing progestins, derived from testosterone, such as popular brand Yasmin.

“Male hormones have a bad effect on the hair,” said Salinger.

Iron deficiency was another factor causing women’s hair to thin out at an earlier age, he said, with low iron stores in the body causing undue stress on the hair follicles.

“There are more people now not eating much red meat, and a lot more people who are strict vegetarians.”

He said medical conditions that could cause hair loss in women, such as autoimmune diseases and polycystic ovarian syndrome were also increasing. Rory Plumridge, managing trichologist at Clive Clinics, which operates out of Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch, said that for the first time women patients were outnumbering men in seeking help for hair loss.

“Forty years ago, 10 to 15 per cent of clients would be women. Today that figure is 51 per cent.”

He acknowledged today’s clinics specifically targeted women more than in the past, but maintained that alone could not account for the massive increases in female clients, especially younger women.

Stress was the main reason genetic hair loss in women was now kicking in earlier, he believed.

“Women are leading much more busy and stressful lifestyles than 40 years ago. Stress on the hair follicle essentially makes the cell think it is older than it is.”

When the body was under large amounts of stress, it produced more androgens, he said, hormones that were similar to testosterone and which could cause hair to fall out.

Despite the experts’ claims, there is no research yet to prove genetic thinning is occurring in younger women. Jack Green, a dermatologist specialising in hair loss at Melbourne University’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said hair loss in women had “always been a problem”.

Up to 40 per cent of women could expect to experience some form of hair loss as they aged, he said.

“For a smaller proportion of women, it can occur earlier, ” he said.

He said medical researchers disagreed as to whether genetic hair loss was affecting women earlier.

“Personally I think it is a case of more women presenting for treatment.”

ONE WOMAN’S ORDEAL

Aged just 29, Auckland woman Corrina* would panic every morning when she found hair on her pillow. Not the full-length strands we all lose every day – but dozens of short, new hairs that should have still been attached to her head.

“I wondered if I was really ill,” said Corrina, now 34.

“I used to have nightmares about waking up and only having a few strands of hair left.”

Corrina told virtually no one about her fast-thinning hair. She felt ashamed. “Women aren’t supposed to lose their hair. There’s a huge stigma. I didn’t even tell my family,” she says.

Instead she hid behind hats and hair styles that concealed the condition, before fronting up to a hair-loss clinic for help. She’s now using a product called Eucapil, which costs $120 a month and is starting to thicken her locks again. Corrina is certain her hair loss was caused by stress.

“No doctor has been able to find another explanation or underlying condition. At that time my marriage was falling down, there had been a death in the family and I’d changed jobs.

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

no comment

Weight loss can help women with hormone dysfunction.

01.01.2008 in FEMALE HAIR LOSS

Hamburg – Women who suffer a hormone dysfunction known as polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) possibly can help their condition by losing weight. Patients who have PCOS, the most common hormonal disorder among women of reproductive age, overproduce the androgen and insulin, said professor Harald Klein of the German society of endocrinologists. A high insulin level in turn promotes weight gain and disturbs the hormonal balance.

“A loss of 5 per cent of one’s body weight reduces the symptoms of PCOS considerably,” said professor Hendrik Lehnert of Schleswig- Holstein’s university clinic in Luebeck.

In addition to being overweight, women who suffer from the hormonal dysfunction commonly have acne and dense body hair, while the hair on their heads is thinning.

Infertility often is also associated with PCOS. Women with the syndrome have irregular ovulation or no ovulation at all. When women with PCOS lose weight, chances improve for normal ovulation and, thus, a pregnancy. The risks of diabetes developing during pregnancy and miscarriage also are lowered.

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

no comment

Transplants may be your solution: By Ng Wan Chin.

01.01.2008 in MALE HAIR LOSS

BALDING can be a traumatic experience for anyone, but especially so for the young.

Take Mr Bernard Chua, who started experiencing thinning and dropping hair from the age of 14.

By the time he was doing his national service, he spent most of his time wearing a cap to hide the shiny spot on the top of his head.

Said Mr Chua, a songwriter, now 29: ‘I was going from doctor to doctor, spending lots of money to try and get a solution.’

But the doctors said there was nothing he could do because it was hereditary. His father is also bald.

Until he happened to meet Dr Eileen Tan at Changi General Hospital a few years ago for an acne problem.

‘She told me a little about hair transplants and I researched it,’ he said.

It was expensive, but ‘I saw it as my last chance to help myself’.
Click to see larger image

Last month, he went for a hair transplant procedure which took about nine hours at Dr Tan’s Mount Elizabeth Medical Centre clinic.

Dr Tan, a consultant dermatologist and hair transplant surgeon, used follicular unit extraction (FUE), a minimally invasive procedure for performing follicular unit hair transplantation on Mr Chua.

It is unlike the traditional follicular unit transplant procedure where a strip of donor tissue is removed and dissected under magnification.

The FUE procedure uses a small punch to extract each follicular unit one by one. The 1mm-hole left behind after the follicle is extracted then heals over the following week.

‘The patient ends up with hundreds of small round white scars, which are normally not detectable once the patient’s hair grows out,’ said Dr Tan.

The donor areas usually come from the back and sides of the scalp that are genetically programmed to grow for life. The follicles are transplanted one by one into the affected areas.

They will take root, and after a short resting period, will grow and keep on growing, said Dr Tan.

As hair growth is a very slow process, the transplanted hair growth become obvious only from the fourth or fifth month after the procedure and will grow about 1cm per month.
Click to see larger image

This procedure is also effective for hair loss due to scars from radiotherapy, infections or scalp disease. It can also grow sideburns, eyebrows, chest and pubic hairs.

‘I have done it for patients who were born with asymmetrical eyebrows,’ said Dr Tan.

Mr Chua, who paid about $17,000 for his transplant, is still waiting to see results.

‘I hope it will be better than what I currently have and I won’t have to hide my hair loss anymore,’ he said.

FUE is generally twice as expensive as the traditional method. Depending on how severe the hair loss is, the cost starts from $5,000 to $6,000 per area of transplantation, said Dr Tan.

Hair transplantation has caught on here, especially in the last two years.

‘When I first came back from overseas training and was at CGH, we were doing five cases a month. Now we do about two cases a week,’ she said.

According to Dr R Sundarason, a plastic, cosmetic and hair transplant surgeon, FUE is time-consuming and costly compared to the traditional method.
Click to see larger image

He said: ‘Depending on the surgeon’s skill, the follicles are more likely to be damaged with the FUE method. I think the percentage of successful follicle extraction is low.’

To Dr Tan, success depends on the skills of the surgeon and FUE simply offers patients another option if they do not want to have strip scars.

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

no comment

A Hair Transplant for a Woman is Not The Same as A Hair Transplant for a Man.

01.01.2008 in FEMALE HAIR LOSS

Since 40% of the worlds hair loss sufferers are women, the hair loss industry sees tremendous potential to increase its market share by targeting this extremely vulnerable demographic.

Not only are unscrupulous hair loss treatment marketers taking advantage of these women in an attempt to sell their bogus products, the large chain hair transplant clinics are now heavily marketing surgical hair restoration to women as well.

It’s important for all women to understand that most of you are NOT candidates for a hair transplant. As a matter of fact, less than 5% of all woman who suffer with common forms of hair loss like, female pattern hair loss or traction alopecia make suitable candidates.

Recently, International Alliance of Hair Restoration Surgeons’ accepted member Dr. Robert Bernstein answered a far too common question from a female hair transplant recipient.

If you’re a woman considering having a hair transplant you can’t afford not to read this article.

Do you have Hair Loss Problems, read our Hair Loss Help

http://hairloss.iahrs.org/hair-transplant/womens-hair-transplant-shock-loss/

no comment