New treatment of baldness Platelet Rich Plasma therapy to go on clinical studies: Nanogen

A new line of treatment for baldness called Platelet Rich Plasma therapy will be evaluated in clinical trials to further ascertain its efficacy in stemming hair loss.

Nanogen, a company based in UK specializing in hair loss treatments is planning to conduct clinical trials in 3 countries to study Scalproller device and other cutting edge therapeutic techniques, reports said.

Nanogen’s large scale clinical trials are aimed to widen their scope for hair loss treatment using the promising Platelet Rich Plasma treatment.

Early results from Platelet Rich Plasma therapy found it could not only improve hair growth and survival of transplanted hair, but also re-grew hair in a patient with alopecia areata – the most common form of baldness.

Nanogen now plans to establish these finding through larger trials.

Platelet Rich Plasma or PRP can be used with hair transplant surgery, or as an independent treatment for thinning hair.

Platelet Rich Plasma technology is currently being investigated by many hair transplant surgeonsin their hair replacement surgery.

PRP therapy is usually performed in 3 stages. First, an amount of blood between 60-100ml is drawn from the patient and centrifuged. The fraction that contains the most platelets and growth factors is then removed and kept. The platelet rich fraction may be divided and one part lysed to release more growth factors then combined with the other whole-platelet factor. This extra treatment is claimed to increase the effects of PRP therapy, especially for hair loss.

The scalp of the hair is then stimulated to activate the wound healing process. This process needs to be activated in order to use the growth factors and platelets that PRP therapy gives.
Previously PRP activation needed to be completed with a single needle. Hundreds of punctures are necessary for the activation step, and so using a single needle was impractical and caused the patient significant amounts of pain.

However, Nanogen’s product Scalproller, can be of great help here. The Scalproller is a microneedle roller that uses 192 unique titanium needles to open the skin to the same depth every time, and as it uses less pressure it causes less pain. As the Scalproller is rolled over the scalp, it saves the surgeon time as well.

The re-injection of the platelet and growth factor rich fragment into the scalp, is the third step in the PRP process. This provides high levels of every factor needed for healing and healthy hair growth, the factors are utilised by the stimulated cells, including hair follicles.

This stimulation as well as access to high concentrations of growth factors has been shown to generate new hair growth, thicken existing hair growth, and make hair transplants grow thicker and healthier.

Nanogen presented these findings at the ISHRS conference.

Nanogen is also collaborating with the University of Bonn to produce an accurate genetic test for hair loss, and has an exclusive agreement with researchers in Bonn to use chromosome 20 as the basis for a test to predict hair loss, as well as accurately diagnose androgenetic alopecia patients.