Ever since it announced its $5.5 million Series A funding round in January 2008, we have covered the news of Follica, the Boston area startup out to bring a scientific approach to developing novel ways of treating and, perhaps one day even curing, baldness and other hair-follicle disorders. These stories, including news of Follica’s $11 million Series B round in August 2008, and the hiring of a new CEO last spring, have attracted a tremendous readership, and indeed have drawn several thousand comments, as fans and followers of Follica have become some of our most treasured readers.

But to the dismay of many of those readers, who are anxious for the latest from the startup, we have had nothing to report since the hiring of CEO William Ju last May. Several of you have written to me personally to ask if there is any way I might coax more news out of the company.

I have been trying, I assure you, and this week I had a modicum of success. Though I couldn’t get anything on the record from a Follica official, sources at the company confirmed that “we are very excited about the progress and are pushing forward with our programs. Everything is going very well and management, the board, and the Scientific Advisory Board are all extremely encouraged by our scientific progress and results.”

I also learned that the company has made some recent hires to expand its staff, though my sources wouldn’t name names or specify how many people have been hired or what roles they are filling.

Lots of caveats to consider. First, try not to read too much into this. These are very vague comments, of the type many companies make when they don’t have much new to impart, or when they don’t want to raise anyone’s expectations. And remember, the science Follica is pursuing is, as far as we can tell, still extremely experimental. So even with some solid advances, an effective treatment could well be years off.

Still, I hope this helps to some degree. Rest assured, we will keep trying to learn more and will let you know as soon as we do. And if you learn anything, please don’t hesitate to let us know, and we will try to run it down.

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San Diego-based Histogen became something of a high-wire act on the local biotech scene last year after a cross-town rival filed a patent infringement lawsuit against the startup—upending Histogen’s plans to develop a variety of regenerative medical treatments.

The patent suit, which was filed a year ago by Carlsbad, CA-based SkinMedica, hit just as Histogen was preparing to report early results of its experimental treatment to stimulate hair regrowth among 24 men with male-pattern baldness. As we reported at the time, the prospect of costly litigation prompted a group of angel investors to withdraw their planned $2.4 million investment, and Histogen was forced to lay off all 36 employees.

At that time, it seemed likely that the teetering startup was headed for a fall, and Histogen would soon be history.

That still could be the outcome. Lawyers for Histogen filed a request for a summary judgment last August that would dismiss the case. Lawyers for SkinMedica filed their response in September, arguing to keep the lawsuit on track and headed for trial. I reviewed the filings in San Diego federal court yesterday, and U.S. District Judge Thomas J. Whelan has yet to rule on the arguments over Histogen’s bid for an early dismissal.

Meanwhile, as I reported in an end-of-the-year summary, many Xconomy readers continue to root for success in Histogen’s experimental treatment for male pattern baldness.

But we haven’t heard much from Histogen since July, when the startup reported final results of its early study. In the experiment, a single injection of the company’s hair regrowth product—formerly known as ReGenica, now called Hair Stimulating Complex, or HSC—was made just beneath the scalp. Histogen says nearly 85 percent of the two dozen balding men had more hair three months after being treated, and they experienced an increase in hair thickness and density.

To get an update, I recently spoke by telephone with Histogen CEO Gail Naughton, who highlighted the company’s latest plans for … Next Page »

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Follica, the Boston-area startup out to bring a scientific approach to helping hair-loss sufferers re-grow their locks, is preparing for some new growth of its own. The firm, run since its late 2006 inception by founding CEO Daphne Zohar of Boston’s PureTech Ventures, announced today the hiring of a new president and CEO, William Ju, a biopharmaceutical veteran with experience in an array of therapeutic arenas, including dermatology (he is a board certified dermatologist). The selection of Ju seems to position the firm to move out of the purely research-focused stage and closer to becoming a drug development company.

“There’s just a lot of excitement with regard to the science, and to the progress that’s been made,” Ju says of Follica’s work to date. “When I heard about the opportunity, I was really delighted with it, given my background as a dermatologist, given what I think is really breakthrough research.” And he says he looks forward to “bringing the company through to its next developmental stages.”

For her part, Zohar put it this way in a statement: “We are thrilled to welcome Bill Ju as the CEO of Follica. He brings the ideal blend of dermatology and drug development experience, creativity and leadership skills to Follica in this next exciting phase of development.”

What, exactly, Follica’s next step is—and when it will occur—is of intense interest to many of Xconomy’s readers, who struck up an often-spirited conversation on the site after we reported Follica’s $5.5 million Series A round in January 2008 and continued the discussion after the startup’s $11 million Series B funding last August. A lot of the talk in these comments has been centered on a 15 to 20 patient proof of concept study that Follica launched to put its follicle-generating approach to the test. Zohar confirmed the study’s existence last August, but the company has not provided other details on its progress—other than to stick to a general timeline laid out in January 2008 that no results would be available for at least a year. Depending on how you count, and when exactly the trial began, that year is either up or close to being up.

Which might or might not have something to do with Ju’s hiring. When I asked him about the trial, Ju, who started on May 1 and is still getting up to speed, was understandably vague. “The trial is … Next Page »

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If only hair could grow as fast as Follica’s pot of money. Just seven months after its $5.5 million Series A financing round, the Boston-based startup today announced it has raised an additional $11 million to bolster its efforts to develop new methods of treating male- and female-pattern baldness and other hair-follicle disorders such as excessive hair growth and acne. Follica, which confirmed a human pilot study of its hair-regeneration technique is underway, also added several new team members, including veteran life sciences and biotech executive G. Kirk Raab, former CEO of Genentech, who joined the company’s board as chairman.

The Series B round was led by Polaris Venture Partners of Waltham, MA (Polaris partner Kevin Bitterman also took a seat on the board), and joined by existing investors Interwest Partners of Dallas and Menlo Park, CA, (which led the Series A round); and founding investor PureTech Ventures, in whose offices Follica is headquartered.

Follica’s main initial focus is developing a treatment for the extremely common form of hair loss called androgenic alopecia—better known as male pattern baldness or female pattern baldness. “This financing will enable us to build out the company and move well down the path towards [regulatory] approval,” says Daphne Zohar, managing director of PureTech Ventures (and an Xconomist). “Our research has been progressing in a very positive way. We have had significant interest from the venture community and while we just closed the Series A round a few months ago, and weren’t planning on bringing in more money for a couple of years, we recognize that additional funds enable us to move more quickly. We have worked with Polaris before and they have been a great partner to us which is why we accelerated the Series B round.” Zohar added that Follica is in the process of transitioning to its own office space, and that it already has independent lab space.

My story about Follica’s debut last January and its quest for a baldness cure sparked a long-running (440 comments and counting as of this writing) conversation among the startup’s would-be customers that’s still quite lively all these months later. This highlights the intense interest in—and vast potential market for—an effective treatment for hair loss. Follica, for its part, claims treatments for conditions of the follicle represent a $10 billion-plus annual market. As Zohar said of the general field of aesthetic medicine back in January: “There’s huge markets, and most of the technologies and things that are out there don’t come from real academic science. A lot of them are this late-night infomercial type of thing.”

Aiming to inject some credible science into the field, Follica was formed in late 2006 by PureTech and a roster of leading researchers that includes University of Pennsylvania stem cell biologist George Cotsarelis, Harvard Medical School dermatologist Rox Anderson, and Vera Price, director of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Hair Research Center. As part of today’s announcement, Follica said it has bolstered this scientific firepower with the addition to its scientific advisory board of Samir Mitragotri, an expert in transdermal drug delivery at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

At the root of Follica’s approach to hair loss is Cotsarelis’s discovery (made after the company was formed) that when the skin’s uppermost layers are removed some cells within the wound revert to a more basic state from which they can develop into either skin or hair—and that he could actually direct cells in this “embryonic window” to form new … Next Page »

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Call it a hair-raising event. Follica, a Boston startup out to develop novel ways of treating and even curing baldness and other hair-follicle disorders, today announced it had completed a $5.5 million Series A financing round. The round was led by Interwest Partners of Dallas and Menlo Park, CA, and joined by founding investor PureTech Ventures, in whose offices Follica is currently housed.

Follica was founded in late 2006 by PureTech and a group of leading academics who include Harvard Medical School dermatologist Rox Anderson, University of Pennsylvania stem cell biologist George Cotsarelis, and Vera Price, director of the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) Hair Research Center. Its primary initial focus is an extremely common form of hair loss called androgenic alopecia—aka male pattern baldness or female pattern baldness.

Follica has targeted a, shall we say, growth industry. According to PureTech’s website, treatments for conditions of the follicle—chief among them hair loss, acne, and pigmentation issues—represent a $10 billion-plus annual market. It’s all part of the even broader category of “aesthetic medicine,” which also includes things like plastic surgery and many obesity treatments. And it is really in the recognition of the potential of aesthetic medicine that the, um, roots of Follica’s story lie.

Daphne Zohar, PureTech’s founder and managing partner (and an Xconomist), says the firm began thinking seriously about aesthetic medicine in early 2006. “There’s huge markets, and most of the technologies and things that are out there don’t come from real academic science,” she says. “A lot of them are this late-night infomercial type of thing.” But the market potential is undeniable, and it wasn’t lost on Zohar that people pay out of pocket for aesthetic treatments, meaning no health insurance reimbursement issues for manufacturers to contend with.

PureTech put together a team of expert advisors to begin looking at different aspects of aesthetic medicine. Their survey spanned everything from skin rejuvenation approaches to fat melting techniques, perhaps more than 100 different ideas in all, Zohar says. “As we were looking, we noticed the most interesting things … Next Page »

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