We founded dNovo in 2018 to solve the problem of age associated stem cell loss.  Our first objective was curing hair loss.  We chose hair loss because no one was directly addressing the underlying problem of hair stem cell loss and we had a solution.  We joined Y Combinator’s 2018 summer class which accelerated our vision of bringing our direct reprogramming technology to the marketplace.
 

Our first objective was to generate personalized hair stem cells using our direct reprogramming technology.   In 2019, we were successful in putting together our direct reprogramming system to generate human hair stem cells (patent pending).  These reprogrammed human cells successfully reactivated the genetic circuitry of native hair stem cells.  They also performed biochemically as expected of native hair stem cells.  After demonstrating this breakthrough, we sought to validate the functionality of our newly reprogrammed human hair stem cells.

9 Weeks After Treatment

We next demonstrated that our reprogrammed human hair stem cells could generate hair.  To do this, we developed an optimized transplantation procedure to efficiently graft our reprogrammed cells.  After optimization, we transplanted our reprogrammed cells to hair-deficient mice and observed promising results.  Hair began to sprout 3 weeks after initial treatment, and by the second month, new hair had clearly grown at the treatment site. With this development, we demonstrated that our reprogrammed human hair stem cells are a viable cure for hair loss.

Dermal papilla cells are another important component of the hair follicle.  These cells serve as the signaling center for hair stem cells and promote robust hair growth. In certain cases where the entire hair follicle is depleted, dermal papilla cells are also lost, and so we sought to generate these cells with our direct reprogramming technology. We have now successfully developed the reprogramming system to generate these human dermal papilla cells (patent pending).  Our reprogrammed dermal papilla cells successfully reactivate the native genetic circuitry and perform biochemically as expected of human dermal papilla cells.