- Reaction score
- 214
Do you think SM04554 has the potential to maintain hair like finasteride, or will it just be glue like minoxidil? You seem to know a lot about the hard science of these treatments.Stemoxydine is a prolyl-4-hydroxylase inhibitor. Hypoxia signaling is mediated by the HIF-1A transcription factor and is degraded by prolyl-4-hydroxylase. So in short it induces HIF-1A favoring a more hypoxic environment for the cells.
If we look at the WNT pathway in relation to hair follicle biology it plays a immense role. It has a huge role in hair follicle cycling, also in the creation of the hair follicle (morphogenesis). On a genetic level WNT10A has also been associated with Androgenetic Alopecia.
I'm with Hairloss23 though that compounds like valproic acid, lithium etc. which work through GSK3-B inhibition also induce b-catenin (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24533507). Now SM is a molecule that apparently targets b-catenin directly and AFAIK is the first molecule ever which works like this and hit clinical trials. Hopefully it will do (significantly) better than minoxidil, who knows... The results will be important imo. We will know the results in 2 days.
Androgenetic Alopecia is just one big beast though. Extremely hard to reverse as we all know.
Future prospects are getting weaker and weaker, at least for the near future which sucks. At the moment I see the hair transplant industry dominating the ranks for the coming years easily. I would love to be proven wrong though.