The latest strand in Pelage Pharmaceuticals’ growing funds comes from a $120 million series B fundraising round that the biotech plans to apply to its regenerative hair loss treatment.
Arch Venture Partners and Google Ventures co-led the funding round, with help from existing investors Main Street Advisors, Visionary Ventures and YK Bioventures, according to an Oct. 15 release. The financing will support the biotech’s lead program PP405, a topical small molecule meant to reactivate dormant hair follicle stem cells and restore the body’s ability to naturally grow hair.
While several companies have been angling in on the growing alopecia areata market, the treatment field for the most common type of hair loss—called androgenetic alopecia or pattern hair loss—is limited. The only FDA approved therapies target secondary factors impacting hair growth such as hormones but have “limited efficacy and unclear mechanism of action,” according to Pelage.
“Despite the growing need for treatments for hair loss, which affects more than 80% of men and 40% of women throughout their lifetimes, innovation has been lacking, and a new FDA-approved option has not become available for decades,” Pelage CEO Daniel Gil, Ph.D., said in the release, noting that the new funding “reinforces not only the need in the space, but the quality of our scientific approach and clinical results to date.”
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Founded by University of California researchers in 2018, Pelage aims to offer a first-in-class solution for both men and women across the spectrum of hair loss, including chemotherapy or drug-induced alopecia and hair loss caused by significant stressors (telogen effluvium). The company closed a $16.75 series A financing last February and has since been working toward a phase 3 trial, which Pelage plans to launch in androgenetic alopecia in 2026.
In what was meant to be a phase 2a study evaluating just the safety of PP405 across 78 men and women with pattern hair loss and a diverse range of hair textures, the drug proved early validation of its regenerative potential by inducing new hair growth from follicles where no hair was previously present.
At Week 8, four weeks after dosing finished, 31% of men with a higher degree of hair loss had an over 20% increase in hair density compared to 0% in the placebo group. A three-month open-label extension study is now complete, and Pelage said it will share the full data set from the trial at a future medical meeting in 2026.
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Pelage made two board appointments along with its series B round, selecting a chair of the board in GV’s executive venture partner Cathy Friedman, who led the previous series A round and advises GV’s life sciences portfolio. Another board seat will go to Richard Heyman, Ph.D., a prolific biopharma founder and current venture partner at Arch.
