The Blavatnik Fund for Innovation at Yale has honored Peggy Myung, MD, PhD, vice chair of research, dermatology and associate professor of dermatology and pathology, with the $30K Biotech Accelerator Award for her innovative research that leverages key molecular signals to induce hair follicle formation. Dr. Myung is among three award recipients at Yale who were formally recognized at the Yale Innovation Summit, held from May 31 – June 1, 2023.
The award honors Dr. Myung and her team, who recently pinpointed two molecular signals that can program the growth of dermal consulate (DC) cells of the hair follicle (HF) in culture, which play a critical role in stimulating hair growth.
“Leveraging this discovery, we have established a new dermal culture system that uses chemical agonists to activate these signals. Our system results in robust DC gene expression responses and outperforms other state-of-the-art dermal culture models. Moreover, our cultured dermal cells exhibit robust growth, demonstrating the ability to expand these HF-inducing cells in vitro,” said Dr. Myung.
These findings lay the groundwork for a new and effective clinical approach to treating hair loss.
“Current treatments for hair loss rely on salvaging or maintaining pre-existing hairs. Our goal is to provide innovative methods to induce new hair follicles to replace defective or lost hair follicles for different types of hair loss,” said Dr. Myung.
The award will ultimately advance Dr. Myung’s continued research in identifying therapies that induce new HF growth for the millions of people in the United States who suffer from hair loss.