Allergan Rep Told Me Latisse Will Be Out Soon for the Scalp
Dear Dr. Rassman,
I was in a plastic surgeons office with my wife last week. I just happened to meet the Allergan rep. He told me that Latisse was going to be released soon for hairlines. The thinking is that if hair is present that Latisse could make the hair shaft grow thicker.
He told me that the company believed that there was a huge market for the product for people experiencing hair loss.
Just wanted to give you a heads up that this is in the pipeline.
A reader pointed out that Latisse (bimatoprost) is currently in a clinical trial for use on the scalp — see here.
I’m not sure how far away they are from submitting for approval, but if the FDA approves it, I’m sure they’d be as quick to get it to market as possible. There’s money to be made on hair loss treatments, and FDA approval of hair loss treatments are few and far between.
Allergen is only doing initial small scale Phase 1 trials at present to establish acute safety, tolerability, and dosing (public information). Drug development is a long and difficult process and there is no evidence at present that Allergen-sponsored efficacy trials have even begun. Drug (marketing) representatives who visit physicians offices are legally precluded from promoting off-label use of approved drugs (for obvious reasons) and this representative is likely both misinformed or miscommunicated, or both. I agree that there is a big market for this and it is in very early development according to Allergen public information.
Coming out soon…yeah, sure!
Reminds me back in the day when my dermatologist told me they’d be coming out with a 5% Rogaine solution any day now. Years later, they finally did.
Just to expand more on my initial point. Even if all the clinical trials had been performed (likely requirements should be similar to topical minoxidil), it would take about 6 months (industry standard) to put the regulatory applications together for the FDA and European authorities, another 10-12 months for the regulatory review (since the disease is not serious and does not qualify for “priority reviewâ€) and another 3-4 months after approval for ‘launch”. So, even if all the data was available today, which it naturally is not, it takes a little while (unfortunately) for things to eventually get to the market. The good news is that Allergan is a public company, seems to be doing the initial human acute safety and formulation studies, and we would likely be reading about successful larger scale trials via both press releases or scientific publications (or both) if they occur down the road.