Final Days: Chinese Scientists Have Solved the DP Culturing Problem! (2014)

[Arashi]

I think they are talking about getting a treatment to market. And as I have asked numerous times lately, what are out options when it comes to avoiding the 10 year delay till it gets to market?

And people responded numerous time: when the science on how to do this is out, you BET that there will be tons of doctors who want to become multimillionaires and will offer this in less regulated countries. And 99% of these doctors will be way smarter than Dr Nigam too.

[clarence]

putting new follicles on balding skin is gonna keep involving new problems. It's like trying to put a new sapling in shitty soil.

Get hair for the recipient zone by depleting the donor area (as in a normal HT), and then use new follicles to fill the depleted donor area with hair once again. Problem solved, right?

[sdsurfin]

Dp cells

Get hair for the recipient zone by depleting the donor area (as in a normal HT), and then use new follicles to fill the depleted donor area with hair once again. Problem solved, right?

that's what I would be going for if I was an HT doctor. Solves hairloss and also keeps them doing lots of business. this would be especially viable with something like pilofocus, where you are not creating scars every time. The problem is that most of these researchers are more focused on new discoveries than making things operational for hair loss sufferers.

I would really love to know more about the way that balding scalp works- where are the androgen receptors? Only in the DP cells, or just the follicle cells, or all over the entire scalp? I'm glad that if I have a son he won't have to deal with this, but I'm pretty sure we're screwed. Looking at those Tsuji papers, they filed their last paper on hairloss in 2011. three years and nothing new from them. anyone who thinks a cure is coming in five years is nuts. Even the CB thing seems like a complete dead end, if it was the miracle preventative that everyone on here touts it as, people would have seen some results by now. the vehicle can't be so complicated a piece of the puzzle. Has anyone had contact with tsuji or tried to email them? It would be really interesting to know if they made any progress. I tried to use their contact form but its in japanese. Anyone in japan? I think that they are probably the best bet as far as a serious and dedicated team working to make follicles. I'm not faulting anyone or anything, things go as slow as they have to, I'm not a whiner like that hellouser dude who thinks everything is owed to me, but it is frustrating to be part of probably the last generation of bald people.

[nameless]

Nope. You're wrong there mate. Check out their paper: http://www.tsuji-lab.com/en/pdf/Toyo...ncomms1784.pdf


"Furthermore, the human bioengineered hair follicle germ, which was composed of the dissociated bulge region-derived epithelial cells and scalp hair follicle-derived intact DPs of an androgenetic alopecia patient, grew a pigmented hair shaft in the transplantation area within 21 days after intracutaneous transplantation into the back skin of nude mice (Fig. 2b)"

AND

"By analysing the nuclear morphology with Hoechst staining40, we confirmed that the cells in the bioengineered hair follicle were of human origin (Fig. 2b)"

So they took exisiting DP cells from human patients and grew human follicles on mice that way.

So then why isn't hair loss cured? I don't understand. It looks to me like they've cured hair loss according to this paper.

[nameless]

And people responded numerous time: when the science on how to do this is out, you BET that there will be tons of doctors who want to become multimillionaires and will offer this in less regulated countries. And 99% of these doctors will be way smarter than Dr Nigam too.

Well, Arishi maybe you're right but it is a little speculative of you to make this assertion. Although I do hope you're right.

[cichlidfort]

The hair follicle isn't too much less complicated than say the human lung, and maybe it is more so, because we're trying to grow them in a part of the body that doesn't want to grow them. I'd say we're about as close to making new follicles from scratch as we are from using a functional human heart from scratch, about 20 years. In ten years they will probably be able to make them, and then add at least ten years for testing and perfection of implantation etc.

No one has "solved" the problem of hairloss, as people on here have been throwing around. No one knows how the interactions between the native scalp and new hair can be mediated (huge hurdle) or how to make a really cosmetically viable follicle. the only thing they have done this year is prove that DP cells can be cultured without totally losing their genetic markers. bleh. I'm not sure why Xu and the upenn people say that DP cells have to be made from scratch, someone should email that team and tell them to clarify. Couldn't you just culture DP cells?

Those are some pretty bold claims there without any credible sources. Are you a scientist working in the field? Are you researching anything related? Comparing a human hair follicle to the complexity of a human heart. Yawn...another negative nancy that thinks they are being realistic.

[35YrsAfter]

Get hair for the recipient zone by depleting the donor area (as in a normal HT), and then use new follicles to fill the depleted donor area with hair once again. Problem solved, right?

That's one way of doing it.

I wonder if men would complain about hair loss if it happened in reverse? In other words we lose hair on the sides and lower back of the head while the top and upper back remain full. Like a high and tight cut.

35YrsAfter also posts as CITNews and works at Dr. Cole's office
forhair.com
Cole Hair Transplant
1070 Powers Place
Alpharetta, Georgia 30009
Phone 678-566-1011
email 35YrsAfter at chuck@forhair.com
The contents of my posts are my opinions and not medical advice
Please feel free to call or email me with any questions. Ask for Chuck

[nameless]

Those are some pretty bold claims there without any credible sources. Are you a scientist working in the field? Are you researching anything related? Comparing a human hair follicle to the complexity of a human heart. Yawn...another negative nancy that thinks they are being realistic.

cichlidfort, I think that the other poster may have a point. Look how long it's taking for science to correctly clone hair follicles. It's not the easy task you seem to think it is. They've been trying to do this for a long, long time. I can understand someone saying that it's proving to be just as difficult to clone hair as hearts and livers. I think they are very close to cloning livers right now and they still can't clone perfect hairs to restore just one bald man's hair. It's proving to be very difficult to crack this cookie for sure.

[cichlidfort]

That's one way of doing it.

I wonder if men would complain about hair loss if it happened in reverse? In other words we lose hair on the sides and lower back of the head while the top and upper back remain full. Like a high and tight cut.

I've had that exact same thought many times. It would be so much better to lose hair on the sides or back than on top. You could actually style it still and play it off as a style. You can't do diddly squat with hair loss on top.

[hellouser]

That's one way of doing it.

I wonder if men would complain about hair loss if it happened in reverse? In other words we lose hair on the sides and lower back of the head while the top and upper back remain full. Like a high and tight cut.

35YrsAfter also posts as CITNews and works at Dr. Cole's office
forhair.com
Cole Hair Transplant
1070 Powers Place
Alpharetta, Georgia 30009
Phone 678-566-1011
email 35YrsAfter at chuck@forhair.com
The contents of my posts are my opinions and not medical advice
Please feel free to call or email me with any questions. Ask for Chuck

I'd mind a little if it was REALLY thin but I don't do much with the sides and back for styling anyway so I wouldn't give a rats ass as long as I could style the top and frame my face like any other normal person can.

Pilofocus should make this possible.

[vcity]

Those are some pretty bold claims there without any credible sources. Are you a scientist working in the field? Are you researching anything related? Comparing a human hair follicle to the complexity of a human heart. Yawn...another negative nancy that thinks they are being realistic.

There's some truth to what sdsurfin is saying. All parts of the human body are complex - both the heart and the hair follicle are organs. Just because the heart is "bigger" for say, does not mean its that much more times complex. I'm betting researches know more about the heart than they do the hair follicle (more worth investigating). At least for the heart they can install valves and artificial pacemakers to keep it functioning .. with hair, all we know how to do is take it from the back of the head and put it in the front.

These new advances are exciting no doubt and progress nonetheless .. but I wouldn't make a claim as to say "final days" or "just a couple of years" away.

10 to 20 years is realistic.

It's not even just about culturing the follicles .. what about implanting them back? Will we get an auto-immune response? Would the new follicles be considered "foreign" by your body regardless of them being cultured by your own follicle to begin with? Are there going to be other implications? Who knows... Everything in science involves tedious testing and especially with something like hair that takes months to grow .. trials can take ages .. especially with refinements being made and restarting the whole process.

With all that being said, all I can do is hope that I'm wrong and something amazing comes up at the world congress with a definite product release coming soon.

[Arashi]

There's some truth to what sdsurfin is saying. All parts of the human body are complex - both the heart and the hair follicle are organs. Just because the heart is "bigger" for say, does not mean its that much more times complex. I'm betting researches know more about the heart than they do the hair follicle (more worth investigating). At least for the heart they can install valves and artificial pacemakers to keep it functioning .. with hair, all we know how to do is take it from the back of the head and put it in the front.

These new advances are exciting no doubt and progress nonetheless .. but I wouldn't make a claim as to say "final days" or "just a couple of years" away.

10 to 20 years is realistic.

It's not even just about culturing the follicles .. what about implanting them back? Will we get an auto-immune response? Would the new follicles be considered "foreign" by your body regardless of them being cultured by your own follicle to begin with? Are there going to be other implications? Who knows... Everything in science involves tedious testing and especially with something like hair that takes months to grow .. trials can take ages .. especially with refinements being made and restarting the whole process.

With all that being said, all I can do is hope that I'm wrong and something amazing comes up at the world congress with a definite product release coming soon.

Of course there are still uncertainties but the ones you bring up I dont see as potential problems. Cultured cells have been used in tons of experiments, there are now even people walking around with complete lab made organs, created out of their own cultured cells (like a trachea: http://abcnews.go.com/Health/groundb...ry?id=20650841). Auto immune response has never been an issue, in NONE of those experiments/treatments. Safety of course needs to be examined but again I doubt there will be issue's (if performed by REAL doctors and not some Dr Nigams). Really, if they can culture DP cells, retain gene expression, get them to form spheroids and grow follicles that way, then the rest I would call trivial.

[youngin]

That's one way of doing it.

I wonder if men would complain about hair loss if it happened in reverse? In other words we lose hair on the sides and lower back of the head while the top and upper back remain full. Like a high and tight cut.

35YrsAfter also posts as CITNews and works at Dr. Cole's office
forhair.com
Cole Hair Transplant
1070 Powers Place
Alpharetta, Georgia 30009
Phone 678-566-1011
email 35YrsAfter at chuck@forhair.com
The contents of my posts are my opinions and not medical advice
Please feel free to call or email me with any questions. Ask for Chuck

http://cdn.sheknows.com/articles/201...con-topper.jpg NOPE wouldnt mind at all.

[hellouser]

These new advances are exciting no doubt and progress nonetheless .. but I wouldn't make a claim as to say "final days" or "just a couple of years" away.

10 to 20 years is realistic.

If the findings prove that they're now able to clone follicles as we desire... what's the excuse for waiting 10-20 years when we already have a working treatment?

[rdawg]

I'm just waiting for the days where they simplify this stuff and give us more of a specific timeline.

also questions:

1.) Is there any reason to believe this type of thing won't work, is there any doubt left still from the scientists?

2) what would be the next step?