Posted on March 24, 2022
Interview With Ernesto Lujan PhD Of dNovo: Reprogramming Hair Stem Cells
In this article, the founder of dNovo Inc. shares insights on his company’s background and current focus.
Brief Interview With dNovo Hair Company
FT: What is the story behind your team deciding to pursue cellular reprogramming as a cure for hair loss? It seems as though there would be a distinctive moment or revelation that would sway you into that direction.
EL: I first became interested in reprogramming during my PhD at Stanford a little over 10 years ago. At the time, I thought starting a company would be interesting, but didn’t take the plunge until 2018 during my post doc at Harvard. During this time, I started to look for a problem that remained unsolved with current methods and where our direct reprogramming technology would be a good fit. When I came across hair, it was quite apparent that current solutions on the market mostly focused on slowing down hair loss or hiding it via transplantation, but not addressing the underlying problem of replacing lost hair stem cells. This was perfect, because direct reprogramming could potentially allow us to do just that – make new hair stem cells.
FT: dNovo had been operating under the radar for the past several years since completing a Y Combinator semester in 2018. Why was now the right time to publicly announce your company?
EL: We have been focusing on developing our proprietary direct reprogramming system over the last few years. Biomedical scientific research typically takes some time, but we felt that our results were exciting enough to start to share with the public.
FT: Could you give us an idea of the current priorities ofdNovo而且,如果自己e, what kind of trajectory you are on in regards to a human trial?
EL: This is only the early step in our journey to cure hair loss. A lot of our future efforts will focus on optimizing our technologies for eventual clinical applications to human patients. The timeline will depend on future business partnerships and other developments that can help drive this innovation forward.
FT: At this early stage in your development, do you have an idea whether your stem cells could be injected widely into a treatment area (such as in PRP injections) or if the cells would need to be inserted more specifically (such as in hair transplants)?
EL: For our proof of principle, our current method involves surgically removing a strip of skin and placing our induced hair stem cells; it does not involve injection like PRP. So, in terms of invasiveness, it is similar to strip surgery. These procedures can be further optimized in the future for less invasive methods.
We are hard at work on developing our product and we greatly appreciate Follicle Thought’s coverage. [end]
Big thanks to Ernesto Lujan for taking the time to share commentary with our audience.
If you have any pertinent questions for dNovo please share them in the comments and I will ask Ernesto if he would be willing to share responses at some point.
I also want to help clarify something Ernesto said and mitigate confusion over the strip surgery remark. Disclaimer that this is my own opinion, but I do believe it’s accurate. Notice that Ernesto is only being precise when he mentions that his “current method” involves removing a strip of skin and implanting the stem cells into it. This is what was done on a mouse. He also points out the fact that this method can be optimized in the future as a less invasive method. I believe a potential application for humans will look much different.
Wow! I think you are one of the first(other than the big investors) to whom Ernesto replied and was willing to talk about this project. Great job FT, i think you have a lot of contacts in the industry , if you try you can join the dots(investors +science) and make something big happen. Cheers!
Thank you Shayak. We’re definitely try to help in the ways we can.
Thank you very much for this interview, FT. Personally, it is the company that I had the most hope for, since it offers the definitive solution to baldness and, unlike others, it seems that it is progressing, slowly but surely, very interesting!
it’s interesting though that he said there is no injection, curious what exactly he would call whatever they do to the harvested strip of skin and whether that could be done to skin that’s still on scalps.
Yeah, it’s curious for now. It almost seems like they need to find a way to get the stem cells directly into the hair follicles which have depleted stem cells. I’m not sure, but he says “placing our induced hair stem cells.” Almost like they’re planting them in. I think in order for it to be a practical treatment for humans they would have to figure out how to implement the stem cells through a type of injection/insertion method.
Very promising
To bad this current mathod is compliacted
I know he said it will improve.
But i actually thought it will be like injection type of treatment
Is there a timeline?
hoelang moeten we nog wachten eer deze behandeling voorhanden is, en zal dat ook dan in nederland zijn?
jan, many years and we don’t know where the trials will take place yet.
Thank you admin for this interesting article
*and interview
I think I might just have figured it out to some extent for what we can do in the meantime until this process gets further perfected. The strip (of human skin) was removed to add induced stem cells to be placed in the mouse to grow. Once the hairs have grown in the mouse or mice, remove these strips of skin in the mouse/mice and immediately transplant the hairs to the human scalp. For example, I would provide the strip of skin to grow the hairs in the mouse and once they have grown, that strip would be removed from the mouse, the hair follicles would be removed from the strip and transplanted into my scalp. This will work for a minor procedure for an isolated area or patch of hair loss (it is a process like FUT strip surgery, but the mouse is used as the intermediary to be able to grow the hairs for human transplantation). This method should be tested to see if these human hairs grown on a mouse will survive transplanted in a human. The reason I am anxious to use Ernesto Lujan engineered process is due to the fact his photos proved the hairs grew in thickly and correctly. Other groups who have grown hair in mice did not produce nearly as optimal results.
I like this company. I think even the mice pics are great haha. Like wtf the hair look good and dense compaired to other companies thats amazing.
But sadly i am 29 years old…so it wont help me before my 50s ….. Maybe kintor ll help me a bit. Lets see
You should try Adegen. Its working for me and many others.
You think this will take 21 years? Are you ok in the head?
Do you think dnovo ll be on the market before? Noway…. Maybe something else but not dnovo.
I must be honest, this sounds like nothing to me. Almost like a scam.
There’s absolutely nothing about them that seems trustworthy to me.
I hope I am wrong.
-Stanford PhDs and MDs with a published paper in Nature.
-Went through the world’s most famous business accelerator in the startup capital of the world
-Multiple investors from Silicon Valley who saw the company up close
-Produced great looking preclinical results to show that their reprogrammed human stem cells can grow hair (at least in mouse model)
-100% chance of going through FDA clinical trial route
No clinical treatment is ever guaranteed to succeed but I can’t say I follow your train of thought there, Ben.
The problem is this is a project with tangible results, but no solution has been offered from it (yet) to resolve the problem we face. Essentially, this is like a science project one would do in the way of a school assignment. Sure, it’s fascinating to be told the basic process and see the results but the part that really matters hasn’t been solved for what we are looking to get done. A presentation showing this result is sadistic almost but not to say dNovo’s research isn’t appreciated. It’s like having a rabbit with a carrot attached to a string, and every time the rabbit jumps to bite the carrot it pulls away. I am not a scientist and have no training in this area yet do possess logic and ideas of experimental creativity. If you look at my previous comment, I am offering a potential solution to the problem faced by many people who have a smaller amount of hair loss, especially useful to those with loss of follicular ostia. What to do is not give people a scientific project to read that had results but contains no workable solution at all to the problem at hand. My proposal is to take this work and at least do something with it to benefit people NOW. Put it to action. We shouldn’t have to wait endless years of reading articles of advances in hair loss that lead to no results which are able to be applied to work in humans. I think another big part of the problem is regulatory agencies and lawyers acting as predators to intimidate and stop scientists from quickly using these advancements to be tried on people to potentially benefit those in need. I understand the scientists at dNovo want to protect their ideas from being stolen and they want proper compensation for its use but if we don’t understand exactly what is being done to make these hair cells from skin grafts then how is anyone here to possibly figure out with good knowledge a way of making this workable for humans? If anyone else has any ideas of what can be done based on what we know so far about this scientific advance, please state your ideas in this comment section. Scientists are trained to understand science, but creative ideas are something that come from within and can’t really be taught from a background of science alone. It is my hope that Follicle Thought passes my thoughts along to dNovo and hopefully we can get something worked out to give my plan a try, and hopefully finally get somewhere meaningful in permanent hair loss recovery. The honest truth to me is it seems like dNovo got the technology worked out, it is just the process by which they apply it that needs restructuring.
I will do what I can to share thoughts or support with dNovo JMM. Rest assured they are looking at multiple options with very bright people. I was planning to have Ernesto come look at the comments here, but I think he may not take kindly to being called a scam by anonymous people on the internet when he is working on the problem that ails them.
Follicle Thought: I consider dNovo’s research legitimate in need of further refinement. The reason people use such terms as “scam” is because they have constantly been let down by all who attempt to solve the problem, so are understandably discouraged. Don’t let a few sour comments discourage Ernesto from having a look at your post comments. There are always a few people bound to do this in a comment section and if he gets a good idea to try out, it could make all the difference in getting his work translated into good use in people who could benefit by it. Please contact him to read the comment section here from time to time and hopefully someone with a brilliant idea will let their ideas be known. Thank you for your efforts!
Maybe Ben meant the prior post by “Craig” which recommended Adegen? I would concur with that thought having visited their website.
This video was recently posted to the dNovo website which features a German news outlet covering Ernesto Lujan and dNovo. Ernesto appears in the videohttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvnn5PHdZRA&t=398sSubtitles are unfortunately unavailable, and I’ve been told the subject matter is all of what we’ve heard previously.
Here’s the translation for those who are interested.
Björn:
These are lab mice from biotech start-up dNovo in Silicon Valley, and what’s growing on the backs of the animals is human hair. Four years ago, 35-year-old graduate biologist Ernesto Lujan founded dNovo, and a few days ago, Lujan and his team of four were able to report a big success. They have grown human hair on the backs of lab mice.
Lujan:
Our method allows us to turn skin cells into hair stem cells. We then implanted these cells into a mouse. To do that, we removed a strip of skin from the animal and replaced it with our hair stem cells and a special support layer.
Marcus:
The result: Three weeks later, the mice grew tufts of hair on their backs. The Stanford and Harvard graduate and his team appear to have found a mechanism to turn stem cells into human hair. “Reprogramming” is what this method is called.
Björn:
在2000年代早期,日本研究人员有一个团体nificant breakthrough in this field of research. They found a way to turn tissue into stem cells, for example the heart muscle. However, there are two difficulties – firstly, to find the exact formula to activate a specific function, for example to grow hair follicles, and secondly to reimplant these back into the human body.
Marcus:
In Silicon Valley, there are several biotech start-ups that are reprogramming cells. Altos Labs is one example: They are cultivating cells to rejuvenate humans. Conception from Berkeley, on the other side of San Francisco Bay, is a start-up that wants to turn blood cells into human ovaries to increase fertility. And in Japan, researchers are trying to implant retinal cells into blind people. Biologist Lujan and his start-up dNovo believe that they’re on the right track to solve the problem of baldness once and for all, which is something you should be glad about as well…
Björn:
Thank you.
Lujan:
So, this was a two-step process. First, we had to create the cells, which wasn’t easy. It took a year of research, and then, another year later, we were able to make it work in mice. So, it was a multi-step process. We’re quite happy with where we are today.
Björn:
Lujan envisions harvesting tiny cells from the human scalp, similar to a hair transplant, and replacing them with the patient’s re-programmed stem cells. However, researchers agree that it will take significantly longer than a year for this procedure to be approved in humans, not least because it’s ethically controversial.
I appreciate that transcript YoYo, a few interesting anecdotes from Ernesto at the end.
很有趣,但这听起来像是他们很远behind stemson. On the positive side, they’ve raised millions so at least there’s another player to breath down stemson’s neck. I hope they find some (big pharma//biomedical) investors to help grow into a more well rounded biotech business like Stemson. That would inevitably allow for pre clinical and clinical trials to progress much sooner. Also, BIG thank you to FT for keeping us in the know.
Thanks Twenti. Yes, let’s see what 2022 brings for dNovo, they have gained much attention in a short period of time.