“Hair fall is multifactorial”

Dr Debraj Shome, Co-Founder & Director, The Esthetic Clinics, has pioneered QR678, a growth factor formula, to treat hair fall. As this patented product takes on the aesthetic industry with success stories each day, it is ready to work with hair professionals in revolutionising in-salon haircare treatments.

It ” all started in 2008-09 when I was an adjunct faculty at IIT Mumbai, and I was also working with cancer patients at TATA Memorial Hospital. With these three aspects, We had access to three very important things - cancer patients, an animal house and the best biotechnology department in the country. We had also set up the Esthetic Clinics at that time. We could formulate molecules that gave us a launch pad for what we are developing at this moment in time,” explains Dr Debraj Shome.

In an exclusive interview with Kanishka Ramchandani, Dr Debraj Shome, Co-Founder & Director, The Esthetic Clinics, explained the journey of patenting a hair growth formula that is revolutionising the aesthetic industry and making inroads in the salon segment as well.

“While using chemotherapy on children with cancer, especially retinoblastoma and neuroblastoma, the nano molecule carboplatin experiment became a huge success. The nano molecule is given locally around the eye. You don’t need to inject it into the veins. So, the collateral damage on the healthy cells of the body is less.”

During experiments on mice, it was noticed that the mice were losing hair around the entire eye area. This observation led to the thought process that if you think of the scalp as soil, then the soil and its nutrients could change depending on what you put into it. “In 2009, we started working with multiple growth factors including vascular endothelial growth factor, epidermal growth factor, etc. None of which was new. However a combination of these growth factors had never been used for hair. That’s how QR678 was formulated.”

The next steps were to prove its efficacy and safety to ensure human cells were not damaged by high concentrations of these growth factors, followed by human trials.

Dr Shome adds, “Currently, QR678 is FDA-approved in more than 10 countries and more than 12 clinical trials have got published in various journals showing that it works against COVID 19-related hair fall, androgenetic alopecia, female pattern hair loss and alopecia areata. It works night serum.” three times better than PRP and works on pre- and post-hair transplant patients, too.”

QR678 is used in 1000+ clinics in India and 500+ clinics in the UK. The formulation comes in a 5ml vial and has to be administered via mesotherapy. For the salon industry, QR678 is available in 1ml mono doses, and the therapist can administer it and use a derma roller.

He further explains, “Hair fall is multifactorial, just giving growth factors may not work in everyone. In case of nutritional deficiencies, the Ashwagandha-driven nutraceutical, which is a food supplement, works really well. This is followed by an at-home Speaking about tapping the salon market, he said, “We realised that people with early hair loss were going to the salons. People don’t change their hairdresser that easily, and as a professional the stylist is the one to notice the early changes. So, we tweaked our formulations to suit the salon industry. Even though it’s driven by the US-patented QR678, the in-salon product is for early hair loss and rejuvenation and the in-clinic product is for later stages of hair loss.”

He estimates that at a salon, the service with QR678 will retail between Rs 4,000-7,000 per session. While there are no known side effects of using the product, thanks to plant-based biomimetic peptides, Dr Shome recommends not using it on pregnant and lactating women. The Drug Controller General of India classifies it as a cosmetic and not as a drug because there are no onerous side effects.

Dr Shome concluded saying that hair restoration treatment of such effectiveness will certainly work well for the salon business because recent data shows that 60 per cent men and 50 per cent of women over the age of 40 are losing hair. How do you run a salon business when people don’t have hair? Moreover, people don’t like going to doctors but they love visiting salons. So, it is a win-win for salons to offer hair treatments with the patented QR678. PBHJ