With body dysmorphia magnified by the omnipresent digital world, psychiatrists have increasingly linked the onset of male and female pattern baldness to mental health conditions ranging from anxiety to even depression.

Over the past decade, cosmetic surgery has looked to ease the burden. However, hair transplants are no panacea as they can be costly and sometimes painful. As a consequence, there is a huge market for any new product that can effectively halt pattern baldness in its tracks, and a series of European biotechs view this as an opportunity. Buoyed by a number of research breakthroughs regarding the science behind hair growth, several biotechs have products in late-stage clinical trials, some of which may go on to become the first novel drug treatments for baldness in twenty years.