JW Pharmaceutical said Monday that it would begin pre-clinical trial for CWL08006, a new concept of hair loss treatment using Wnt signaling pathway, jointly with the School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
CWL080061 activates the Wnt signaling pathway, which decreases during hair loss process, and enhances hair follicle stem cells and primary hair cells.
The substance is the result of the pharmaceutical company’s compound pool, which specializes in Wnt signaling field. JW Pharmaceutical has been researching the Wnt field that regulates cell proliferation and regeneration since the early 2000s.
The research has led the company to hold original technology, including JWELRY, a library of tens of thousands of compounds, and an innovative screening system that can distinguish the activity and inhibition of the Wnt signaling pathway.
The two institutions plan to begin preclinical testing by 2019 and enter clinical trials around 2020. JW Pharmaceutical also intends to accelerate its commercialization by launching tests on the human body for cosmetics that utilizes the drug’s mechanism, next year.
“Existing hair loss treatment drugs had side effects due to the suppression of male hormones and had no effect on the already progressed hair loss,” said Han Sung-kwon 한성권, CEO of JW Pharmaceutical JW중외제약. “There also was a problem of the hair loss resuming when people stopped the treatment.”
The company expects CWL080061 will become a new concept treatment that can completely cure hair loss, he added.
The University of Pennsylvania also showed enthusiasm for the research.
“Our research team has published in Nature that Wnt is a target remnant that regenerates hair follicles,” said Professor George Cotsarelis, head of research at the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Medicine. ”The team will check the effects of hair regeneration through the team’s pre-clinical model.”
The company plans to expand Wnt activation research into new drug development treating dementia, osteoporosis, skin regeneration and targeting anti-cancer drug pipeline that inhibits the current Wnt signaling pathway.