July 23, 2002 (Tokyo, Japan) - Aderans Inc., the parent company of Bosley Medical, announced today that it is setting up a new company to research both Cell Therapy and Tissue Engineering as a means to addressing the problem of hair loss.

The new company called Aderans Research Institute, Inc., will have its main office in Los Angeles, California, but the actual research will be conducted at two facilities, one in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and one in Atlanta, Georgia. The facility in Philadelphia will study methods of cell therapy to induce hair follicle cell growth and will be headed by Dr. Kurt Stenn, previously of Johnson & Johnson research, who will also be the Chief Scientific Officer of the new company. The facility in Atlanta will be run by Thomas Barrows Ph.D., a biomaterials polymer chemist previously of Bioamide, Inc., and will use tissue engineering to develop methods to package and implant hair follicle precursors. The entire group will have a staff of 9 researchers and is being funded by an initial $400,000 of seed capital provided by Aderans Inc., who is the sole owner of the company.

Aderans has also acquired Bioamide, Inc., and has folded it into their new facility in Atlanta. The new company will continue working on Bioamide's technology which has already earned it three patents with another three patents pending. Bioamide has been in operation since 1997 and has already made substantial progress with its tissue engineering approach to creating new follicles. One issue that slowed down their research was a lack of funding, so the acquisition of the company by Aderans will alleviate that problem and allow the research to continue.

photo by Gary Meek provided courtesy of Georgia Tech Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Robert Guldberg, right, and graduate student Blaise Porter discuss their work on a 3D bone culture system that pushes nutrients through biological scaffolds at controlled rates. They are testing the effects of perfusion rate on gene expression and viability of cells at the center of the scaffolds. Guldberg has filed a provisional patent on the system.

Bioamide's technology involves coating fine wires with a special polymer and then fusing them together. A pore-forming agent in the polymer is then triggered when researchers submerse the polymer in hot oil. The high temperature decomposes the pore-forming agent in something like a foaming process. The result is interconnected porosity that creates a scaffold with a lot of surface area where cells can attach and grow. Researchers then remove the fine stainless steel wire in the scaffold and create even larger pores that run throughout the scaffold. The intent is to provide the cells with rapid access to the scaffold interior so the cells can quickly integrate with vascular tissue.

photo by Gary Meek provided courtesy of Georgia Tech Graduate student Kimberly Huynh is working with Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Robert Guldberg to analyze tissue-engineered bone with high-resolution micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). Here, she holds a tray of specimen containers for the micro-CT imaging system. On the computer screen behind her is a 3D image of bone grown in an incubator in Guldberg's lab. Researchers can visualize changes in the 3D microarchitecture of the bone and quantify, not only the amount of new bone formation, but how it is oriented and organized.

Bioamide has been doing its research in conjunction with the Center for the Engineering of Living Tissue, a joint venture between Emory University and Georgia Tech. Thomas Barrows, who is now heading the new Aderans research institute in Georgia, co-founded Bioamide Inc. with Katie Mattox in 1997 to develop tissue-engineered bone for "bone scaffolding," a biotech process to heal broken bones. Bioamide has already conducted small scale trials.

Aderans Research Institute will apply the results obtained from the two facilities to the hair transplantation business of Bosley Medical Institute, Inc. which Aderans bought last year. Both facilities will open in July 2002.