Researchers at Chung-Ang University Hospital have confirmed the efficacy of Inventage Lab’s hair loss injection treatment, which can significantly improve patient convenience compared to conventional oral therapies.

Professor Kim Beom-joon

The treatment only requires patients to receive the injection once a month compared to the daily intake needed for oral drugs.

Inventage Lab’s treatment uses finasteride, a drug that inhibits male hormones that cause hair loss. It is applying its proprietary drug delivery platform technology to develop a finasteride injection treatment lasting one month.

The team, led by Professors Kim Beom-joon and Na Jung-tae at the hospital, used an experimental model where the rats were induced with testosterone to cause hair loss.

Afterward, the team divided the rats into two groups – one that received Inventage Lab’s treatment and one group that received the conventional oral drug – and observed the two groups for 10 weeks.

As a result, the hair growth rate of the finasteride injection group was 93.3 percent, compared to the oral formulation group’s 86.7 percent.

Also, the finasteride injection group saw blood dihydrotestosterone concentration decreased by 32.0 percent after six weeks and showed an inhibitory effect of 5α-reductase similar to that of oral formulation intake groups up to 10 weeks with a single injection.

“Due to the development of injectable hair loss treatment, the team expects to significantly improve the compliance of hair loss patients as they no longer have to take an oral drug daily,” Professor Kim said. “By minimizing the intake amount of the drug, we can alleviate adverse reactions such as erectile dysfunction and decreased libido, which may occur in existing oral medications.”

The injection can also improve safety issues such as fear of congenital disabilities due to hormonal disturbances during exposure of women of childbearing age, Kim added.

Inventage Lab CEO Kim Joo-hee also said, “As the age group of male baldness patients is lowering to people in their 20s and 30s, the market for hair loss treatments is expanding, and demand for treatments with dramatically improved convenience and safety of administration is increasing.”

Future clinical trials will allow the company to confirm that finasteride injections can resolve the inconvenience of hair loss patients who were taking oral medications, Kim added.

International Journal of Molecular Medicine published the result of the study.

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