A Canadian regenerative medicine company just leased 13,000 square feet of space in Irvine.
The company, Acorn Biolabs, uses people’s own stem cells to create products that it says reverses the signs of aging.
Its first product on the market is a topical cosmetic with current applications in hair loss and improving skin quality. It’s also looking to leverage its stem cell technology into other areas of health, including orthopedics and ophthalmology.
Acorn’s expansion in Orange County comes amid significant growth of its U.S. business, according to William Hall, chief operating officer of Acorn. It previously had a smaller office in Los Angeles.
“The West Coast is where we’ve seen by far the most growth in our U.S. business, so we really doubled down in the area about six months ago,” Hall told the Business Journal.
Hall said the firm will have fewer employees working remotely, resulting in more workers on site in OC.
The company counts a more than 40 total employees, with half based in Irvine.
‘Supercharging’ Hair Growth
Acorn is creating “supercharged” versions of people, according to Hall.
Its treatments aren’t a replacement for hair transplants, which is the only way to permanently regrow hair, though they can be used alongside hair transplants.
“At this stage, we’re not duplicating or replicating the follicle,” Hall said.
“That’s really a tissue engineering long-term strategy, something in our pipeline, but our focus today is much more on enhancing a version of you and then delivering that back to the patient with hair loss.”
Instead, Acorn is focused on activating dormant hair follicles and thickening existing ones.
On the skincare side, the product is intended to be paired with an aesthetic procedure, such as microneedling, to open the skin’s channels. It’s said to regenerate skin at the cellular level and improve the appearance of wrinkles, skin texture, tone and pores.
For the stem cell collection process, 50 hair follicles are plucked from the back and sides of the patient’s scalp at a clinic or physician’s office and cryopreserved by Acorn until patients want to access them for personalized regenerative treatments.
Acorn was founded in 2017 by Dr. Drew Taylor, stemming from Ph.D. research he conducted at the University of Toronto.
Restarting Company in Southern California
In 2020, Acorn was based in a hospital and looking to go to market before the pandemic hit, but the healthcare crisis forced the company to shut down its commercial operations.
Coming out of COVID-19, Hall said that the board sat everyone down and asked them if they could restart the company anywhere in the world, where would they pick?
“We had some pretty strong indication that the product would have success in the cosmetic space, so we said Southern California,” Hall said.
They were then introduced in 2022 to Octane, an Orange County accelerator for startups in industries such as ophthalmology, medtech and aesthetic medicine. Acorn joined Octane’s Launchpad Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and spoke at its Aesthetics Tech Forum, where they met some of the company’s future advisors and investors.
“You could tell that they had a strong appetite for the work we were doing locally, so that led us to then create a U.S. company owned by the Canadian company and open up a very small office in Southern California,” Hall said.
Since then, the company has raised an $8 million Series A round in 2024 and is gearing to raise a Series B “very soon,” according to a recent interview Hall did with Octane CEO Bill Carpou.
While not disclosing an actual revenue figure, Hall said that Acorn has recently had 35% quarter-over-quarter growth.
