Hair-raising lab story garners headlines on potential cure for balding

George Cotsarelis, a dermatologist at the University of Pennsylvania and a scientific co-founder of a Boston-based biotech, is back in the news with a hair-raising piece on a potential drug breakthrough. And Cotsarelis says he's already started talks with pharma companies interested in the commercial potential of his work.

Cotsarelis says that he and colleagues in the lab found an enzyme dubbed prostaglandin D2--or PGD2--appeared to be the primary culprit behind male pattern baldness. About three times the normal level of PGD2 appear in bald patches, leading the investigator to search for a compound that could inhibit the enzyme and perhaps restore a full set of hair for the folliclely-impaired. 

"The nice thing about dermatology and hair loss in general is that you can take compounds that maybe are being used as a pill and put them in a topical formulation," Cotsarelis told the Mail Online. And women may benefit as well, he adds.

Cotsarelis may have ignored mentioning his position as co-founder of and scientific advisor to Follica, a Boston-based biotech founded by Daphne Zohar from PureTech and others. About five years ago Zohar told FierceBiotech: "One day George Cotsarelis told me that he was working on something in his lab that was really interesting. I was appropriately skeptical, but said, OK. Let's take a look at it. It's a great lab. It turned out to be extremely exciting. Potentially paradigm shifting."

- here's the story from The Telegraph
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read the Mail Online piece

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