Hey Dr,
Great blog, keep it up. I’ve read about seemingly cures to hairloss – follica, haircloning etc.
Just to make things clear – Is follica’s approach also known as hair cloning, or is it completely different? I just want to distinguish between the two.
I ask because you say that haircloning will probably not available for another decade, or more. And am wondering if this applies to follica’s research.
The difference relates to the mechanism of action for Follica which is distinctly different from hair cloning. A Follica press release states, “By studying wound healing on a molecular level, Dr. George Cotsarelis and colleagues discovered that the skin has the ability to revert to a more primitive or ’embryonic’ state as stem cells migrate to the affected area, thereby achieving a regenerative capacity not previously appreciated to occur in adults.” It is this capacity that the research for Follica is based on.
Simply put, cloning requires that replica cells are created from an original cell, while the approach from Follica is to simulate the repair process, gaining more control over it to produce hair. The same press release goes on to say, “The researchers were able to control the regenerative response, including the extent of new hair follicle formation, by manipulating genetic pathways during this ’embryonic window’ when new follicles formed.”
I am optimistic of a hair loss breakthrough in 10 to 15 years, but if you asked someone a decade ago, they likely would’ve said the same thing back then. A lot of people are getting tired of hearing the same old “cure in the next 10 years” talk, but I will continue to be optimistic even if that timeframe comes and goes. Baldness isn’t a life threatening illness, but it is a billion dollar business… so as long as people continue to lose hair and there’s a market to end that loss, there will be companies clamoring to come up with the next great treatment. As technology evolves, the concepts that some people came up with that were once considered ludicrous can finally start to become within reality’s reach. Don’t get me wrong — there are still plenty of ridiculous ideas that will never work to treat hair loss. We’ll just have to wait and see and try not to buy into the hype too much, because there’s been far too many letdowns over the years (like that flying car we’ve all been promised).
Each volunteer was injected 900 times with the suspension containing the lab-grown DP cells in a large area which was photographed at the end of the study. Volunteers were also injected in a smaller area, divided into two halves – counts were obtained by shaving and photographing the two small halves of this small area of the scalp, injecting them multiple times (either 1 injection of 50 µl or 50 injections of 1 µl) with living DP cell suspension and then applying a specialized image analysis system to provide a total hair count. In these small sections, all 19 subjects in the trial were treated using a range of injection and scalp pre-stimulation techniques; the first 6 subjects were injected without stimulation of the scalp. In the remaining 13 subjects the resident hair producing (epithelial) cells were stimulated at the time of delivery of the DP cells in one of the two treatment sites. 13 subjects completed the 48-week trial with 6 subjects lost to follow-up. Of the 13 subjects completing the trial the data showed that:
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