dNovo Looks to Grow Hair and Emerges From Stealth

<p><strong>SAN JOSE<&sol;strong> &&num;8212&semi; dNovo Inc&period;&comma; a company developing a cure for hair loss by generating personalized hair stem cells&comma; has emerged from stealth mode and announced &dollar;2&period;7 million in seed funding from Y Combinator&comma; Felicis Ventures&comma; Soma Capital&comma; Yintai Investment Company LLC&comma; and others&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&lbrack;<strong>Photo above<&sol;strong>&colon; Laboratory mouse 7 months after transplantation with dNovo&&num;8217&semi;s induced hair stem cells&period; Source&colon; BusinessWire&rsqb;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>dNovo is developing a proprietary direct reprogramming system to generate new&comma; personalized hair stem cells to replace cells lost due to aging or conditions such as male patterned baldness&period; Using its proprietary technology&comma; dNovo has converted human skin cells directly into induced hair stem cells without going through a pluripotent state&comma; and demonstrated that these induced hair stem cells were capable of producing hair in a mouse model&period; dNovo was recently featured in <i>MIT Technology Review <&sol;i>and <i>Fortune<&sol;i>&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We are excited to showcase our direct reprogramming system and the potential for our technology to address the underlying cause of hair loss&period; With our reprogramming system&comma; we have demonstrated the feasibility of generating induced human hair stem cells and shown as a proof of principle that these cells can be used to grow hair&comma;” said Dr&period; Ernesto Lujan&comma; founder and CEO of dNovo&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Direct reprogramming technology does not rely on generating pluripotent cells but instead directly converts one cell type into another &lpar;for example&comma; in our case&comma; skin cells to hair stem cells&rpar;&period; This makes our system quick and scalable&period; We are further optimizing our technology platform&comma; and look forward to working with potential partners to bring our reprogramming system to the next stage&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We are very excited by dNovo’s early results&comma;” said Niki Pezeshki&comma; General Partner at Felicis Ventures&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Hair loss is one of the medical challenges that affects millions of people every year&comma; but most current solutions only focus on slowing down hair loss&period; With dNovo&comma; we see a fundamentally different approach to treatment as dNovo is actually regenerating new hair stem cells&period; This has the potential to become a real cure for hair loss&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>&OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;We see dNovo at the forefront of innovation with their quest to address the age-old and pervasive problem of hair loss&comma;” said Nikhita Jaaswal&comma; Investor at Soma Capital&period; &OpenCurlyDoubleQuote;Their novel breakthrough approach using direct stem cell regeneration to give rise to hair follicles has massive possibilities in treating hair loss in a manner compatible with innate human biology&period; We look forward to supporting the efforts of the dNovo team as they continue to develop their technology&period;”<&sol;p>&NewLine;<p>Other investors include Ataria Ventures&comma; Duro Ventures&comma; Pioneer Fund&comma; Paul Buchheit&comma; Jason Hodges&comma; Max Kolysh&comma; Joey Krug&comma; Justin Mateen&comma; Jean Pigozzi&comma; Claudio Pinkus&comma; and Charles Songhurst&period;<&sol;p>&NewLine;