Organ Technologies and RIKEN Update
A week ago, important news came out from Japan that the Organ Technologies and RIKEN team (led by Dr. Takashi Tsuji) partnership was making progress in its development of a cure for hair loss that they still aim for commercial release in 2020. They will conduct safety trials on mice starting next month.
If all goes well, human trials will commence next year. Since new Japanese laws related to clinical trials are aimed at speeding up the process, it is not out of the realm to aim for a 2020 product release. Especially since this autologous treatment entails using ones own cells (and multiplying them), implying less likelihood of major side effects. Key new quote from Dr. Tsuji:
“The latest results indicate that we have gone beyond the research stage. We will seek to industrialize a technology born in Japan.”
A significant number of people posted links about this news; or e-mailed me about it; or criticized me about not covering it (I deleted the most insulting comments). While I was very glad to read this positive update from the RIKEN team, I delayed this post primarily because I was not too impressed with the speed of their research. I thought that by now they must have already started work in humans, but that was clearly an incorrect assumption.
We have already known for several years that this RIKEN/Tsuji team aims to release their treatment in 2020. Both of my posts in 2016 that were related to this at-the-time groundbreaking news (see here and here) garnered around 300 comments each. At the time, there was justifiable reason for major excitement. This work represented the breakthrough that we had been awaiting for decades. Moreover, all four parties involved (Organ Technologies, Kyocera, RIKEN and Dr. Tsuji) have great reputations. Each brings unique strengths to the table. Most importantly, funding would never be an issue for this work due to involvement of large corporations as well as the Japanese government (via RIKEN).
Last year, I conducted a future hair loss treatment related poll on this blog. This work, led by Dr. Tsuji’s team, came in as the second most looked forward to treatment that people were most optimistic about. I would definitely rank it as number 1 most important, as would numerous others on various hair loss forums out there.
- The great Mount Fuji Maru Kugarazuka has far more details about this news (you need to translate to English).
- While the original press release that I linked to earlier makes no mention of Kyocera, the below two links do briefly mention that important partner.
- Organ Technologies pdf about this news.
- Japan Times article.
