Next Line of Cures for Balding
What can we expect in the next line of cures for balding if cloning, as you suggest, is not going to appear in the next couple of years?
There are many new approaches for the treatment of male genetic balding that fall below the radar. I tell my patients that there are a few hundred steps to growing and cycling hair in the human body. What we know appears to be very little with regard to the identification of each of these steps and in understanding how each step may or may not be dependent upon each other. There are drugs coming out that will address the hair loss problem, possibly better than Propecia, but it will take time to determine how these drugs work, as many of them were/are discovered by accident rather than by taking a model of the drug that fits into the defective pathway for balding. Once the drug is screened for toxicity in desktop or animal model, the predictability of these drugs in addressing the hair loss problem needs to be identified. Safety and effectiveness (a term I throw around a great deal when I am asked about potions and lotions offered to cure balding) must meet a stringent FDA standard, just to protect the public. I tried to research the drug pipeline to give my readers something to ‘cut their teeth on’, that might give them hope. I have outlined a couple of important articles that will shed light on either the potential of a new drug just recently hitting a press release, or an insight into the risk factors for dealing with new drugs to give the readership of this blog some insights into the scope of the problems and opportunities before us.
- New drug possibility: Curis
- Variation of cloning approach: Intercytex
- Hair multiplication: Ken Washenik
Safety determination is no simple job. Even with the most stringent testing for the toxic effects of a new drug cleared from animal testing, the risks take years to define. Unfortunately, the following linked article showed the risks all too soon for the 6 young people who became victims of the drug testing process. The point I want to make here is that you do not want this type of outcome from taking a drug, potion or lotion on any product that is not well tested and through thorough human trials run to strict standards. See: Parexel in hot water over drug trial scare
Curis is indeed a drug and will go through the classical FDA process to validate its effectiveness on humans. It might take some time, maybe 3 to 4 years.
Anyway, you’re making a big confusion : HM is NOT A DRUG. It’s a tissue engineering procedure which uses your own cells. The procedure consits in three steps : 1) a biopsy 2) cultivate of the hair inductive cells 3) injection of the cultured cells in your head. This procedure doesn’t use anything that is not already in your body. The HM procedure won’t go through classical FDA trials and will be fast tracked, as already stated by the FDA and the MHRA. Intercytex has passed the Phase I trials, which means the product is SAFE. They envision an FDA registration filing in 2009. That pretty damn close, don’t you think Dr Rassman ?
ps : and btw, Intercytex (UK) and Aderans (Ken Washenik, USA) are doing the same thing.
cheers :)