Overview

Hair loss is bothering lots of people. In places where we live, the size of the group which involves people with hair loss keeps expanding, and appears to happen more often in young people. As members of our team gradually get into high school, the problem of hair loss has really become a problem that bothers us instead of just being a joke. Hair loss is a complicated problem that might be induced by various factors relating both to physiological and psychological disorders. We find that people always feel helpless when they determine their mind to seek help.

Our team AIS-China focuses on hair loss this year, hoping to use gene-edited E.coli to produce a-KB, which is a potential molecule to stimulate hair growth. a-KB will provide the public with milder, safer, affordable, and convenient options for treating hair loss.

What is Hair Loss? Why does it occur?

To understand why our hair falls from our heads, we first have to understand the normal process of hair loss. Naturally, hair loss is a physiological phenomenon, with the loss of hair also symbolizing the growth of new ones, characterizing a healthy cycle for the hair group, known as the Hair Cycle.

The renewal of a hair follicle is divided into three cycles: anagen, catagen, and telogen. In normal conditions, about 80% of people's hair is in the anagen phase, and about 20% of people's hair is in the catagen and telogen phases. Anagen is when hair grows, and this period takes around 2-7 years. Catagen is the transition period between anagen and telogen. Catagen takes around 2 weeks, and in this period, hair is cut off from the blood supply, growth slows, and hair follicles begin to shrink. In telogen, hair follicles degenerate, hair stops growing, and dead hair falls out; this process continues for around 3 months. As a result, the average person loses 50-100 hairs a day.

However, when the hair growth cycle is disturbed, with a shortened anagen and extended telogen or inflammation or atrophy-induced hair follicle damage, large amounts of hair begin falling simultaneously. During this abnormal hair growth cycle, the average person loses more than 100 hairs a day.

Why is hair loss such a knotty problem？

For the public, hair loss is becoming a severe problem that steps closer and closer to our daily lives, increasingly affecting the younger generation today. In China, the problem of hair loss has been an important factor that has affected people's health since 2020. Around 27% of informants for a health survey reported being bothered by hair loss. In 2020, there were 250 million people who reported having hair loss, which accounts for 18% of China's whole population. Among them are around 163 million men and 87 million women, and this number is increasing. Furthermore, the phenomenon of hair loss shows a younger trend. From 2017 to 2021, the proportion of hair loss people who were born in the 1990s increased from 36.1% to 39.3%, which becomes the largest body among all people experiencing hair loss.

Source from Dr Dingxiang "2020 National Health Insight Report"
source from National Health Commission data
source from Mob Institution

Although Hair loss has become a common problem among the general public. The issue turns into a really troublesome matter as individuals are suffering to find effective ways to deal with the problem. We distributed a questionnaire to investigate the public's hair loss and attitudes(check HP pages for more details). We received 544 valid responses. The survey results showed that 48.53% of respondents believed they were experiencing hair loss. Surprisingly, most respondents had not taken any measures to address their hair loss due to concerns that treatment may exacerbate hair loss. A small fraction who pursued treatment were not entirely satisfied with the results. The results suggest that there might be limitations in the ways we currently use to treat hair loss.

Current therapies

To clarify the problem: Why does the public have a negative attitude towards treatment? We try to understand the current treatment methods through research and interviews with doctors. Current hair regrowth projects can be sorted into three main techniques: Washing and care, surgical treatment, and medical treatment. Washing and care products including shampoo and refined oil are convenient in terms of usage. However, they are of low effectiveness, which lost credit among the public. surgical treatments (eg. hair transplant, PRP) have a good therapeutic effect, but they require a high cost, which most people can't afford. Medical treatment seems to be a better way to solve this problem, but people often do not choose to use medicine. Why does the public not favor medical treatment, despite its effectiveness, authority, cheap price, and efficient use?

Kind of treatment	Effectiveness	Price	Use convenience	How to access
Washing and care	Hardly effective	The range is widely distributed and selective.	Use during or after the cleaning process of hair、highly convenient.	Individual purchase
surgical treatment	Highly effective	Expensive, unaffordable for the majority	Incision and pain、postoperative recuperation	Often operated by business organizations
Medical treatment	effective to certain groups of people	Cheap, affordable to most	Topical or oral treatment、relatively convenient	Mostly prescribed by hospitals

Medical treatment

Medical treatment options vary depending on the type of hair loss. There are mainly 3 types of medical treatments: antiandrogens, anti-infective drugs, and Minoxidil.

Antiandrogens and anti-infective drugs： Spiralone and finasteride are commonly used antiandrogen drugs, only for specific types of alopecia: androgenic alopecia. These medicines function by suppressing the secretion of androgen which causes alopecia. To increase the effectiveness, minoxidil is recommended to be used with these medicines at the same time. Androgenic hair loss is the most common type of hair loss. What's worth mentioning is that medical treatments often receive little outcome in terms of terminal androgenic alopecia. The effects are more significant for early-stage alopecia.

Infectious alopecia, another common type of alopecia, is caused by bacterial, fungal, or other microbial infections, including scalp fungal infections or folliculitis. Infectious hair loss affects the health of the scalp and hair follicles. Antifungal, antibiotic, or antiparasitic drugs are used according to the type of infection and are used topically in combination with anti-inflammatory drugs.

Minoxidil： Minoxidil is the only topical drug approved by the FDA and NMPA, which is suitable for almost all types of hair loss. Minoxidil affects the hair cycle to stimulate hair regrowth through vasodilation, which allows more nutrients into hair follicles. At the same time, Minoxidil is recognized as an over-the-counter drug, so it is easy to obtain without the doctor's permission, making it highly popularized among alopecia patients.

However, the effectiveness of Minodil in stimulating hair regrowth is only 50-70%, leaving many people's problems unsolved. Additionally, Minoxidil is a hardly soluable component and the most common solvent used is propylene glycol which means topical minoxidil might also cause allergic dermatitis which results in a more severe round of hair loss. This solvent also leads to poor user experience. Users of minoxidil also reported that the scalp develops oily coverage after using minoxidil.

A picture showing the principle of minoxidil

To make the problem of hair loss simplified

We realized that medical treatment is the most convenient method that the public can get access to, and at the same time Minoxidil is the most adaptable and the only drug suitable for all types of hair loss. However, due to its limited effectiveness and allergic symptoms, there are still many people's problems that have not been solved. This suggests that a new type of option is needed for the public. To solve this problem, we, AIS-China, decided to find a new, milder drug for hair growth and use synthetic biology to produce it.

Meanwhile, the public lacks an understanding of the types of hair loss and medical treatments. In the context of widespread medical treatment misunderstandings, it is difficult for the public to take action to seek help, which may cause them to miss the best treatment opportunities and irreparable hair loss. In order to avoid this situation and guide everyone on how to face hair loss correctly, we have launched a series of HP activities. (Check HP pages for details)

We found a-KB

Alpha-ketobutyrate (a-KB for short) is an intermediate metabolite commonly found in the metabolic pathway of organisms and has been widely used in medicine and the food additive industry. Research shows that a-KB can boost hair growth by stimulating autophagy (a self-degradative process important for balancing energy sources in cells） which activates the hair follicle and wakes it up from telogen into anagen. In experiments conducted on mice, the mice treated with topical a-KB after being shaved during telogen show a more rapid hair growth.

a-KB is highly water-soluble, which is a great advantage, which means it does not require the use of organic solvents when it comes to commercial use. In the use of minoxidil, organic solvents are the main cause of allergic reactions and greasy. Apart from that, there are more advantages of ⍺-kb than minoxidil. Studies have shown that ⍺-KB can be used as a food additive to add flavor. It is safer to use compared to minoxidil, and it can be made into products that can be eaten. People can use ⍺-kb in two ways, eat and smear. Furthermore, ⍺-KB has an anti-aging function, which provides a-KB with greater potential and possibility.

the mechanism of activating hair follicle with autophagy（Chai et al., 2019, Cell Reports）

A picture of mice after receiving a-KB treatment after being shaved（Chai et al., 2019, Cell Reports）

Ways to produce a-KB

The natural production of a-KB is limited and extraction from organisms is difficult. Modern industry commonly uses the chemical and enzymatic way to produce a-KB. Chemically, a-KB is produced with hydrolysis of the mixture of diethyl oxalate and ethyl acetate. However, the raw material required is expensive and there are large amounts of byproducts. The method is environmentally unfavorable as the two chemicals required for the reaction are toxic. The enzymatic production includes reactions between enzymes and substrates. Expenses for enzymes and substrates are high and there is high energy consumption.

Now, through biological synthesis, we use genetically engineered E. coli to produce a-KB. Both environmentally friendly and sustainable. The costs are also affordable. [See design pages for more information on how we obtain a-KB]

Who are our Target Audiences?

Through deep talk with doctors and interviews with target customers, we confirm the use of a-KB for hair regeneration (check HP for more), and just like minoxidil, it can be used by all people who suffer from abnormal hair loss. We focus mainly on two groups of people, which will be introduced later in this passage, and they might be the first users of a-KB.

The first group is people who are allergic to Minoxidil and those who found Minoxidil not efficient in their situations. Minoxidil is the only topical drug approved by the FDA and NMPA for almost all types of hair loss, its efficiency is only around 50-70%, and concomitant with allergic symptoms. Furthermore, Minoxidil is greasy for use. Due to these negative sides of Minoxidil, lots of people's needs are not satisfied. a-KB would be the best alternative for these people since it is wilder, safer, and fresher. In the future, a-KB will show up to the public as an OTC, and these people can purchase our product by themselves.

Apart from that, we focus on patients who are experiencing telogen effluvium among all hair loss patients. Telogen effluvium is caused by factors such as long-term pressure, giving birth to babies, or rapid weight loss. In our project, we focus more on patients caused by pressure and after giving birth. Since the trend of hair loss among young people and the increasing pressure from society, there is a huge group of young people and the market targeting this group is enormous, so we hope to seek young patients with resting hair loss as our target customers. Furthermore, we learn that there are no effective medical treatments for hair loss patients caused by giving birth to babies from the discussion with Dr. Liu. When the patients go to the hospitals to seek help, doctors will not prescribe minoxidil but useless placebo treatments. Therefore, we think this group of patients will be our potential target customers. We hope that when there are other new mothers going to the hospital to find a solution to their hair loss problem, doctors will be able to prescribe a-KB as a trustworthy and effective treatment for them in the future.

reference：

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