Biologic understanding of the hair follicle, the mini-organ that produces the shafts of keratin we call hair, has advanced by leaps and bounds in the last ten years. Now a handful of biotechnology companies are trying to translate this new knowledge into viable treatments for male pattern baldness and other types of hair loss.

I wrote about the new approaches for Nature Biotechnology (access limited to subscribers), which use cell-based therapies and topical drug cocktails designed to stimulate epidermal stem cells to create new follicles. Hair loss afflicts men, women, and children as a result of aging, disease, and medical treatments. The men's market is so huge, one researcher told me, “It’s mind-boggling.”

In the April issue of Nature Biotechnology (subscription only), I reported on a new medicine approved for the treatment of gout -- Uloric (febuxostat) -- the first in 40 years. Three more new drugs are moving through clinical trials and drug-makers are hopeful about their approval by the FDA. The new drugs offer more choices to the limited options doctors have had for decades. And gout, yet another disease of our overconsumptive sedentary lifestyle, is on the rise.

(Image by 19th century caricaturist James Gillray.)

Can people be vaccinated against high blood pressure? I wrote about two companies that think it's a viable therapy for Nature Biotechnology (subscription only). The vaccine stimulates the body to make antibodies against angiotensin -- a circulating hormone that tightens blood vessels -- and the target of most current antihypertensive medications. Early results in small studies have shown the vaccine to be safe and to have some efficacy. However, the products are up against two hurdles: showing they work better than standard treatments and overcoming physician skittishness about biologic products (as opposed to traditional pharmaceuticals).

One group of doctors who are very comfortable with biologics are rheumatologists. A biologic drug that has offered real hope for people suffering rheumatoid arthritis is infliximab (Remicade®), which is an antibody against an inflammatory mediator called tumor necrosis factor or TNF. I covered the Janssen Award symposium for the New York Academy of Sciences (subscription only) honoring the drug's inventors, Marc Feldmann and Ravinder Maini of Imperial College London. Their first success was reported in 1993 in a small study of 20 patients, whom Maini described described as “train wrecks—severely disabled people who had been through the gamut of therapies with no hope of benefit.”