Curis hedgehog stuff (not strictly hair-related)

[Tricia]

This is kind of interesting, the same stuff that Curis is testing for hair is being tested for wound healing. I guess wound healing and hair growth go hand-in-hand. It reminds me of Tb4, which is being tested for diabetic wound healing (and not so much for hair growth).

New Report Suggests Hedgehog Pathway Stimulation Improves Wound Healing in Diabetic Wound Model

CAMBRIDGE, MA , May 9, 2005 - Curis, Inc. (NASDAQ: CRIS), a therapeutic drug development company, today announced that a new report has documented the beneficial effects of Hedgehog pathway stimulation for accelerated wound closure in an animal model of diabetes-impaired wound healing. Poorly healing wounds, in part due to impaired circulation, are often a major complication of diabetes, which afflicts an estimated 18 million Americans. Diabetic wounds can lead to severe complications if left untreated. For example, m ore than 60% of non-traumatic lower-limb amputations in the United States occur among people with diabetes.

The new study was presented at the 66th Annual Meeting of the Society for Investigative Dermatology held May 4-7, 2005 in St. Louis, Missouri. The research for this study was performed in the laboratory of Dr. Douglas Losordo in the Division of Cardiovascular Research at the St. Elizabeth's Medical Center of Boston, Massachusetts. The authors observed that part of the wound healing response to stimulating the Hedgehog signaling pathway involved increasing blood flow within the wound, and they concluded that a topically applied Hedgehog drug therapy may have significant therapeutic potential for enhanced wound healing in patients with impaired microcirculation such as diabetic foot ulcers.

The Hedgehog agonist program was exclusively licensed to Wyeth Pharmaceuticals in February 2004. Under the terms of the license agreement, Curis retained the right to develop Hedgehog agonists for topical treatment to stimulate hair growth. The license agreement was subsequently amended to broaden Curis development rights to include topical applications to treat or prevent skin diseases or disorders. In both instances, Wyeth must approve any compound that Curis will develop under its retained development rights. In December 2004, Wyeth approved a group of Hedgehog agonist compounds for use in Curis retained programs. We are currently using these Hedgehog agonists in our hair growth program and this new report suggests that they may be useful for development in a wound healing program as well.