There is now and update on the Curis trials of the hedgehog antagonist...

http://news.hairlosshelp.com/hair-loss-news/curis-relea...hairgrowth-compound/

We may not be far off ladies and gentlemen (mostly gentlemen, I'm guessing.)

Can anyone clarify what exactly this means:

"Curis also has the option to co-develop the drug from IND filing through Phases I and II."

This Curis thing has been in the news off & on for a while.

What would the hedgehog thing do, anyway?
Does it stop the DHT from binding to the follicles? Is it a glorified anti-inflammatory?


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The Hedgehog pathway is a chemical signaling agent that will, in layman's terms, flip the switch that tells the hair to grow.

It has nothing to do with DHT or anti-inflammatories.

For an example of how the hedgehog pathway would work: have you ever noticed how most babies look as if they are suffering from an advanced form of baldness? That is because the signaling pathways have not begun to tell the hair to grow at their young stage of development. The hedgehog pathway (discovered in the hedgehog gnat) would simply flip the switch which has been degraded by DHT and tell the hair to begin growing again. Minaturized hairs would simply ignore the effects of DHT and begin to grow full, healthy terminal hairs.

Despite popular use of the words "dead follical," there is no such thing. The follical gets so degraded by DHT after time that it simply stops producing a viable hair. AS a matter of fact, your face is covered with many of these so called "dead follices", they are only pronounced in those that still produce the genes of our prehistoric ancestors - the "dog boys" of Mexico, for example.

Therefore, if the treatment is safe, it could possibly be a real cure for baldness. There is little debate as to it's efficacy, but there are still some questions as to it's safety - if the treatment is not properly administered it could develop into tumourous growths. Therefore, it is imagined by Curis that the treatment would be given in an out-patient medical environment like botox treatments today.

There is yet no word as to how many treatments would be required or what form they would take. Odds are that treatment would be more effective than hairtransplants and far less expensive.

As you can tell, it's very exciting.

Elastic,

The drug is currently being developed by Curis and P&G. They have the option to continue to co-develop the drug (contractually) with P&G through various stages and collect more funding once they reach milestones within the testing. Should they continue to co-develop (which they most likely will) through the development of an FDA approved treatment, then P&G will take a larger share of their profits from the drug.

Wasn't it just in the news that Curis has dropped research into the headgehog agonist thing because of safety concerns?

Anybody?


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Yeah it was just on the news that the research has ended due to the potential of causing cancer.
This thread is from about 2 weeks before that news came out. Its an awful pity.
HLBD goes into some detail as to why in another thread.
Go into the find option on the main menu and type "curis hedgehog signaling pathway". Its all there

Kind of ironic that they are also looking into the hedgehog signaling pathway for ways to cure cancer.

Maybe if they successfully create a decent cancer drug, the side effect will be growing all your hair back. hehe.