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Agreed. I don't buy into those theories that they don't care. There's so much money to be made. Unfortunately creating hair has been way more difficult than people figured 15 years ago. But good progress has been made recently. Jahoda succeeded at expanding DP cells and growing follicles, Tsuji labs created follicles out of epelithial and mesenchymal cells, in Tokyo the first clinical trial with iPS cells has started recruiting and next year these researchers in Spain are going to start with that trial of artificial skin. We're getting really close. Of course it will still take several years because of the whole trial process but we're closer than ever now.Comment
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Of course we're closer than ever... we're 15 years into the future. What'd you think would happen, some magical time machine would take everyone back to 1960 or something?
Solution should have been made possible years ago. I'm not going to accept the stagnant progress from all these biotechs. This is ridiculous.Comment
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So where's the cure then? Haha. So you're saying the only reason we don't have a cure is because there's a conspiracy to keep bald guys down.
That's quite the conclusion.
We don't have a cure because we don't have a cure, not because there's a bunch of hairy headed guys somewhere keeping it a secret.Comment
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So you admit progress is being made (otherwise we wouldnt be closer). That's my whole point. It's not that a scientist can sit down one day and know how to clone hair the next day (unless their name is Dr Nigam, LOL). It's a lengthy process in which they need to figure out every detail. It's only a few years ago that iPS cells were even invented and now a clinical trial has started ! It's only since a few years people are now walking around with stem cell created organs (a trachea). It's only as of this year that they've succeeded at creating human follicles in the lab. It's coming. But you seem to not acknowledge how difficult it is. It's not that nobody wants it, it's that it's very complicated and a lot of fundamental knowledge is needed. But the multi billion dollar incentive is surely there.Comment
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Holy crap. Looks like Nigam created a black hole on his head with all those new hairs.But then again, while professors all around the world are working hard to find out how to expand/differentiate DP cells and to find the origins of the intrinsic hair properties, we have this wonder doctor/mediator/guru/weightloss specialist/yoga trainer in India who figured it all out more than a year ago:
(sorry, had to do it, this pic still cracks me up lol)Comment
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Well that's research in general man. A few years ago people thought they could restore heart function after an attack by simply injecting some stem cells. Now it turned out it's a lot more complicated than that. It's exactly the same thing with hair restoration, or organ regeneration in general. Things like this need time and progress is always way too slow. Any patient suffering from any disease wants a cure now instead of tomorrow. And while I don't want to downplay hairloss, it can't be compared to something like heart failure man. If you think we have it bad, think again. So really, it's not that scientists aren't willing or aren't pushing hard enough, it's just that it's a lot of work. But we're really getting there and the possibility of a cure within the next 8 years is really big now.Comment
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I don't know where you guys are getting that magic number of 8 years.
But let's say someone did find a cure in 8 years, the FDA would prolong that about another 10 years before the treatment will actually be provided to the public.
I am more frustrated with how the FDA works than I am frustrated at the scientists who are trying to find a cure.Comment
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No way this is trueBut then again, while professors all around the world are working hard to find out how to expand/differentiate DP cells and to find the origins of the intrinsic hair properties, we have this wonder doctor/mediator/guru/weightloss specialist/yoga trainer in India who figured it all out more than a year ago:
(sorry, had to do it, this pic still cracks me up lol)
Would take him at least a year.Comment
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Hehe of course it isn't. You can't just simply inject some stem cells and expect hair to grow (which Nigam claimed, I was just reading back his first thread ever on that other site, he sold that 'stemcell multiplication therapy' for $3800 to desperate baldies when he came to the forums a year ago)Comment
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Very interesting man
This is definitely another huge step forward. This should play TWO major roles in the coming years:
1) (Excerpt from ARI's latest published paper) The majority of the work investigating cell based follicular neogenesis has focused on retaining or enhancing the trichogenicity of the dermal follicular cells (DP cells, etc). Much progress has been made to maintain dermal follicular progenitor cell trichogenicity; however, very little attention has been paid to the epidermal cells. Recently, ARI improved the epidermal culture conditions of mouse neonatal cells. The improved culture condition resulted in an epidermal cell that was able to form an epidermal basal layer when injected in vivo. With this enhanced epidermal cell preparation, ARI was able to create a mouse follicle using cultured mouse-derived epidermal and dermal cells for the first time.
This study brought this research one step further
2) More importantly, it will play a role in pre-clinical trials as a "skin assay model" for researchers to test different protocols to see if hair can actually grow before entering human trials. That was one of the hurdles that Washenik highlighted earlier this year:
"A major hurdle to a cell-based solution to alopecia is the development of a clinically relevant model of the human scalp. Currently there is no laboratory model that allows for the investigation of the delivery of cells into the human scalp and the mode of action in a cell-based therapy. Without a model, it is difficult to determine the appropriate method of delivery, cell types, and cell ratios to achieve therapeutic efficacy." - Washenik 2013
If we have a fully functioning skin model, we can figure out the angle, depth of implantation, etc before entering human trials...
On a different note, I might be wrong but wouldn't there be rejection problems since the original cells were sourced from the umbilical cord of a different person? I haven't been able to access the actual study though...they may have found a way to overcome this problem!Comment
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Hellouser, I agree with you that we need more effort in the hairloss field, but the engineering problem we are facing today is seen across the board in all areas of tissue engineering not just follicles. Here's a very recent article that is so relevant to our conversation:
The Future of Tissue Engineering
Thu, 07/18/2013 - 11:37am
Christina Smith
Over the course of just one month, physician-scientist Jeffrey Lawson, a vascular surgeon and vascular biologist out of Duke University, successfully implanted three bioengineered blood vessels in human patients – a milestone that marks the culmination of a 15-year project and a breakthrough that Lawson calls “the end of the beginning” in the field of human tissue engineering.
Lawson, who claims to live in the place between the blood and the blood vessel, is a practicing MD in vascular surgery with a PhD in cell and molecular biology. Combined, his specialties have allowed him to both perform surgeries and maintain an active vascular research lab. It is this combination that ultimately fostered ideal conditions for the creation and implantation of the bioengineered blood vessels.
The ideal lab
Lawson’s laboratory at Duke concentrates on basic research related to blood, blood clotting, bleeding related to surgery, blood vessels and blood vessel structure.
“Our lab was uniquely suited to help do some of the basic science related to this tissue engineering project,” he says. “The research team was able to do all the surgical implants in the animal models that were required by the FDA before getting to humans.”
And, when it got to humans, Lawson was there to be the clinical vascular surgeon who could implant the graft himself, in his own patient, as part of the human clinical research. “This tissue engineering project has been intimately involved with my own research about how to put blood in a foreign tube and not have the blood clot,” he says.
Working in partnership with Laura Niklason, another physician-scientist and founder of the biotech tissue product company Humacyte, Lawson and his research team began to explore the possibility of engineering a blood vessel that would have the structural and biological requirements needed to be implanted as a replacement in a human.
The process was not easy. Lawson says the initial goal was to make “your blood vessel for you,” a goal that morphed and changed over time.
“We would make a prototype, implant it, it would fail, and we would make a new prototype – we did this for many years. We eventually got to the point where we could make a blood vessel for an animal from its own cells…but the cultivation of that, the growing time, it just takes too long,” Lawson says. “If you need a new vessel, you don’t always have a three-month window to grow it. So we had to back up and reconfigure.”
Building a cellular house
The final product implanted in Lawson’s three patients is a “vascular graft” that the human body can repopulate with its own cells after it is implanted; and, Lawson says, from a manufacturing standpoint, the graft can be available on demand.
The graft is developed on a biodegradable matrix that melts away over a period of weeks. The matrix is constructed using a bioabsorbable mesh that can be molded into any shape. Once the matrix is shaped into the blood vessel prototype size – about the diameter of a pinky – the matrix is seeded with screened, banked vascular human muscle cells, provided by Humacyte. After cell culture media, vitamins and other essential nutrients are added, the muscular cells begin to grow into the mesh and eventually replace the initial foreign materials with their own collagen.
“They set up their own structural network of cells,” Lawson says. “It’s basically like a cell house – in each room a cell lives and around them is the structure of the house.”
After the cells have built this house, Lawson says there is only one way to ensure the graft will not be rejected by its host, like so many other implanted organs often are: “We kill all the cells.”
“If you leave the cells in there and implant the graft with them, it can work, but it can also put that tube at risk of being identified or rejected by the host you put it in. So, to make it inert, we kill all the cells and we wash them away from the collagen tube that’s left,” he says.
The leftover tube is the structure that Lawson implants into the circulation system of a person or animal.
“The live cells grow into that structure just like it was a house waiting to be repopulated, which is really the magic in all this,” Lawson explains.
Surgical success
The “first-in-man” surgical implantations of the vascular grafts are considered successful and are being monitored closely. According to Lawson, the three patients currently show no signs of infection or clotting.
“Patients who are willing to help us advance medical technology by participating in clinical research are important – they’re as important as we [doctors] are,” Lawson says. “Having someone say, ‘I don’t know anything about this tissue engineering, but I trust you and it’s okay if you perform the surgery on me,’ takes a lot of courage. Those people understand the need and want for new medical technologies. I give them a lot of credit.”
Understanding the future
Despite the success of the bioengineered vascular grafts, Lawson knows there are plenty of hurdles to come in his field.
“We’ve been able to recreate the fundamental properties of a blood vessel both structurally and biologically, so I think we’ve got that first hurdle well controlled. There are still 1,000 questions we have to answer before we can evolve into creating other organs or tissues,” he says, “but I know it’s possible because every day in the world there’s a little fetus that knows how to grow not just a blood vessel, but a kidney and an eye, and all of that genetic programming lives within our own tissues – we just don’t understand it yet.”
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I personally think we are around 10 years away from having sufficient understanding to engineer new human hair follicles and implant them with correct angle and colour...I know that's a bit too late for most of us who are in our 20's and 30's now BUT at least we know it's coming...something that our parents didn't even dream about!Comment
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"I personally think we are around 10 years away from having sufficient understanding to engineer new human hair follicles and implant them with correct angle and colour...I know that's a bit too late for most of us who are in our 20's and 30's now BUT at least we know it's coming...something that our parents didn't even dream about!"
its always "10 years" and then in 2023 a new person on this forum will proclaim a cure will out in 10 years.
Truth is we may never get a cure, it may jut not be possible, however much we want it.
people with cancer may die from it, people in wheel chairs may never walk again, once you get wrinkles you may always have them, one day you will get old and die. That;s just life, we can fight all we like but that doesn't guarantee success. I woke up this morning and my first thought was i'll never have the great hair i had when i was 20. just aint gonna happen, we may get better treatments but never 80,000 hairs on top of my scalp again.Comment
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@crafter
Posts like yours make no sense. "Truth is we may never get a cure" is just a ridiculous statement that goes both ways. might as well say "Truth is tomato sauce"
Yes there is tons of speculation on every thread on this forum and thats what people on forums do. None of us have any idea of what may or may not happen. Down the line we may invent a pill that just signals or body to produce hair so you have just as much as you did when you were 18. Ill pretty much guarantee! you that every single person on heres body is capable of regrowing all their hair BUT our bodies just arent trying to do it. we have all the tools in house but its just not on our bodies to do list.
Dont trust anyone who guarantees their will ever BE/WONT be a cure.
All thats really on my radar right now is what the heck is going on with histogen and fingers crossed they arent pulling the plug or have hit roadblocks or something. 2015/16 release in Asia was sounding so promising a year ago. 30-40 hairs per cm2 and ill shit rainbows for daysComment
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