In II Kings 2:23-24, the prophet Elisha is mocked by a gang of surly kids. Which would mean that he has found the solution to an ancient problem with an eternal stigma. But Weinstein is confident that he’s discovered the cure for hair loss. That company, RiverTown Therapeutics, is to date tiny and unknown. Weinstein founded a company to develop RT1640 for the consumer market. “You can see-I grew my hair back! And it grew back more or less the color I had when I was young.” Not exactly an overflowing abundance, but hair, to be sure.
There was a spotty, thatchy outcropping of gray-black hair. Weinstein has big dark eyebrows and a kind face. And, after a couple of weeks, I said, ‘Look at my head.’ And she said, ‘Your hair is growing. “I didn’t tell anybody I was doing this, including my wife. Then Weinstein began experimenting on himself. Working in his lab, in his spare time, he developed a drug compound he called RT1640. And then I thought, I know a little bit about regenerative medicine.” Weinstein is a neuroscientist specializing in spinal-cord injuries and nerve regeneration. “I’m the only male in my family who managed to keep my hair! And I was in my mid-fifties, and all of a sudden it fell out. “I really was pissed off,” he explained to me recently, in the tidy, tiny conference room of a co-working space in Manhattan. David Weinstein started to lose his hair.