Over the last year, I’ve been increasingly critical of press releases announcing “breakthrough” hair loss treatments.

To be clear: I’m excited where hair loss research is going. I’m also hopeful about a few experimental treatments (I’ll tell you about one in this email).

But all too often, the very companies conducting great research are also the ones issuing "press releases" about their novel treatments that, to put it mildly, are wildly misleading.

Here are just a handful of examples from the last few months:

• Veradermics released a presentation claiming their slow-release minoxidil regrow more hair than finasteride and minoxidil. What they failed to tell consumers: their study used a different definition of "non-vellus hairs" - one that counted hairs so thin and wispy that they wouldn't have even qualified as a "hair" to count in the very finasteride and minoxidil studies they claimed to have outperformed.
• Pelage Pharmaceuticals issued a press release claiming their novel topical - PP405 - regrew hair in just 8 weeks and led to vellus-to-terminal hair reconversion. But a closer look at the data showed Pelage only reported percent hair changes on a subset of a subset of their study participants. Even worse, when they shared their before-after photos, the claim of "vellus-to-terminal" hair reconversion looked less like a real phenomenon, and more like a coding error.
• Cosmo shared a press release about their topical contender - Clascoterone - claiming it improved hair counts by more than 500% relative to placebo. It's a metric that sounds wildly impressive, until you unpack what it actually means: the treatment could've regrown 5-6 hairs, and the placebo could've regrown 0-1 hairs. We don't know, because Cosmo deliberately withheld sharing the total hair count changes from that same press release... and the highlighted before-after photos don't exactly inspire confidence.

I could go on, but you get the point. The big picture is that these "press releases" are less about scientific honesty, and more about marketing through stochastic paltering.

Now with all that out of the way...

There are companies developing future hair loss treatments that, in my opinion, are trying to set a better standard of communication for everyone. One of them is Absci.

Absci is working on a novel drug - ABS-201 - which lowers prolactin signaling in cells. Notably, ABS-201 does not target DHT (the hormone causally linked to androgenic alopecia). In fact, Absci's entire thesis rests on prolactin sitting upstream from DHT in the hair loss cascade. In fact, they've invested millions into conducting clinical trials in hopes of proving it.

Through an intermediary, Absci reached out and asked if I'd like to have a conversation with their founder - Sean McClain - about prolactin, hair loss, ABS-201, their current clinical trials... with no questions off-limits. I said yes.

Across two meetings, we spoke for nearly 3 hours. And I took the best parts of our conversations to make this video:

​The root cause of hair loss is prolactin?! (An interview with Absci's founder)​

In the video, we discuss the craziest monkey hair regrowth photos I've ever seen, the science supporting prolactin's hypothetical role in pattern hair loss, why a previous drug (HMI-115) might have failed to produce great results in humans, my concerns with the hypothesis (featured at the end), and much more.

What I appreciated most about this conversation was that Sean committed to doing something virtually all other companies in this space won't:

In December, when Absci shares an early read of their phase I/IIa clinical trial results, Sean has publicly committed to issuing an uncontroversial data read.

In other words: no statistical tricks. No data obfuscation. No subset-of-a-subset analysis. No apples-to-oranges comparisons. Just a real look at what ABS-201 might do for the hair loss community, and if it's trending toward safe & effective.

Regardless of what happens with this drug, that deserves celebrating!

So if you have time, check out the full video. We dive into topics never-before covered on the channel - including the strongest arguments for (and against) prolactin's role in androgenic alopecia.

In December, when that early data readout is ready, I'll let you know what it says!

All my best,
Rob

P.S. - if you're interested in pursuing evidence-based treatments available right now, I helped cofound Ulo to facilitate your access to them. We just released a new sulfate-free ketoconazole shampoo, available worldwide.

And for those in the U.S., we also offer a range of Rx treatments, such as low-dose topical dutasteride, low-dose topical finasteride, topical minoxidil with tretinoin, oral dutasteride, and more.

The entire brand is built around providing you with an unrivaled level of personalization - so you can stick with your hair loss treatments for the long-haul. I hope you enjoy what we have to offer.

Regardless, I look forward to sharing more content like this. Any content requests, please let me know.

​