Turkish hair transplant clinics may get serious competition

Last Friday, Cosmo Pharmaceuticals shares closed at 91.40 Swiss francs, while the week before it was at 62.20 francs. The reason for the record rise is the company's announcement on Wednesday (3 December) that its product to combat male pattern baldness has performed exceptionally well in advanced phase clinical testing. It would mark the biggest turnaround in the treatment of male androgenic alopecia (baldness) in more than thirty years.

Testing of an external-use solution applied to the scalp, called clascoterone 5% topical solution, has produced "breakthrough" results, the company says. Compared to the placebo solution, the former resulted in a significant increase in hair count (Target-Area Hair Count) of up to 539 percent, while the latter was a 168 percent increase.

Meanwhile, the second group of men had a denser hair growth than the first at the time the test began, which completely explains the percentage difference, according to Cosmo Pharmaceuticals. Thus, in the case of a thinner hair growth, the percentage improvement in thickening is many times more pronounced than in the case of a less thin hair growth.

Nearly 1,500 volunteers participated in both tests, which were conducted in the USA and Europe.

Cosmo's shares jumped after the announcement of the aforementioned test results, as they bring considerable hope for significant progress in the treatment of a disease that affects between 1.2 and 2 billion men worldwide. In many cases, it also has an emotional or social impact.

If approved by the relevant regulatory authorities and launched, it could be as revolutionary as Novo Nordisk's Ozempic or Wegovy, which are breakthroughs in the fight against obesity (and not just obesity) and have for a time made the Danish company Europe's most valuable listed company ever.

The rise in shares of Cosmo, founded in 1997 in Italy [now headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, ed.], which is also now using artificial intelligence to develop products, is undoubtedly good news, potentially not only for billions of men, but also for its investors.

Conversely, it is bad news (not only) for Turkish clinics focusing on hair transplantation. These have in recent years become a haven for customers from all over the world who have their hair thickened by local specialists for a considerable sum of money. However, hair treatment in Turkey is still up to four times cheaper than in California, where it can cost more than 12 thousand euros.

Last year alone, medical tourism brought roughly two million visitors from all over the world to Turkey, the unwritten global superpower of male hair transplantation. They have provided the local economy with additional income in excess of EUR 2.5 billion, according to data from the Turkish Ministry of Health. The majority of these were men who came to the Crescent State specifically for hair transplants.

The text, which has been shortened, was originally published on lukaskovanda.cz.