RALEIGH – Virtue Labs, the Raleigh biotechnology startup that won top honors in the 2019 Best of What’s New Awards from Pop Science for its innovative product Virtue ColorKick,on Monday product line to help an estimated 30 million women who are today suffering from female hair loss.
The biotech company is focusing on scalp fertility and hair fiber survival.
Virtue Labs, with support from actress Jennifer Garner who grew up with the company’s creative director, Adir Abergel, and who noted she trusts Abergel’s decisions with everything hair related in a December 2019 article published on WRAL TechWire. It closed a $28.6 million in equity from 26 investors in November 2020.
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The new product line, Flourish, is also powered by the company’s technology, a keratin protein complex known as Alpha Keratin 60ku CLINICAL. The scalp is the starting point for all hair growth, and the company’s new line focuses on this site to nourish the scalp’s microbiome and strengthen the moisture barrier while clearing the follicles.
According to the company, the product line increased the thickness of each individual hair strand by 22 percent and reduced hair strand breakage by 26 percent.
“As a biotech brand born from regenerative medicine, Virtue has always gone where our technology has led us, and that is certainly true with Flourish,” said Melisse Shaban, founder and CEO of Virtue Labs. “Hair loss is a silent epidemic that women are facing alone. With this launch we aim to provide truly efficacious products and to shatter the stigma of women’s hair loss with open conversation around this important topic.”
The product launch comes after three years of discovery and research, noted Shaban, and includes six products that can be purchased individually between $28 and $48 or within two three-step regimens at $134, available at a website set up by the company specifically for the product line.
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According to the company’s statement, an independent lab with real conditions found that 97 percent of women reported their scalp feeling healthier after six months of using the product regimen.
Virtue Labs, which has a few dozen employees, is headquartered in Raleigh and has a manufacturing facility in Winston-Salem. It holds a patent on the technology behind Alpha Keratin 60ku®.
