Crowdfunding for Dr. Xu

[sdsurfin]

answer

I'm not skeptical, this science is real and will eventually cure baldness. I'm not that excited, because in terms of my own lifetime I doubt it will have much impact. However, that's not a reason to not help make it happen.

Question: Does anyone read japanese or is anyone in japan? I am going to go ahead with the crowdfunding for dr. xu unless I feel like Tsuji is closer, and is willing to do the same kind of thing. (which I think they might be)

However, I can't read their contact form or get in touch with Tsuji, if anyone can, then please help out. I'm just waiting to hear from dr. xu about any restrictions penn medicine might have on funding. I would not worry about FDA etc etc, once the science is completed then we will probably have to wait for regulation, and can't change that. However, once one person knows how to do it, it will help other countries and teams do the same thing. penn medicine is not a private company, and is not looking to keep anything secret.

[HairlossAt15]

Can you please ask about the progess relating to pgd2. I.e if clinical trials will start soon and any other related news.

[deuce]

I would rather donate money to get CB topical on the market than this. Why give a guy 4 million and still have to create the follicle and go through trails. I want hair now. He is associated with Follica and they still do not have anything in trials. If we could give 4 million and know it could happen with in three years that that would be cool. But pratically this is a crapshoot. Some will be mad and say Im an idiot, but whatever.

[hellouser]

I would rather donate money to get CB topical on the market than this. Why give a guy 4 million and still have to create the follicle and go through trails. I want hair now. He is associated with Follica and they still do not have anything in trials. If we could give 4 million and know it could happen with in three years that that would be cool. But pratically this is a crapshoot. Some will be mad and say Im an idiot, but whatever.

Cosmo already has money, nothing will change their course anyway. Better to focus on a real solution as CB is still just a band aid solution like Finasteride (albeit a potentially better one).

[sdsurfin]

news

From Dr. Xu:


"To make hair follicle, DP cells are required as you know. DP cells can only be isolated from hair follicles. One hair follicle, one DP cell aggregate. To make more hair follicles, you will need more DP cells aggregates. One recent study (Higgins et al., 2013) showed that DP cells can maintain their follicular genetic capacity if they are cultured in 3D. If you ready the paper carefully, they used passage 2-3 cells to make DP cell aggregate in the culture. Since each DP aggregate contains many cells, it means that this procedure can maintain DP cell folliculogenecity, but not necessarily make more DP cell aggregates. Therefore, the auhtors may or may not be able to make more DP cell aggregates (and more hair follicles) than the original hair follicles that they have taken out from the patients.

Foreskin is very different than scalp. Foreskin is usually from infants and we found that there are lots of stem cells in the foreskin, but the number of stem cells are far less in adult scalp. Thus, transplant the DP cell aggregates to scalp will not work in adult.

To make more DP cells and keep these DP cell with folliculogenecity, we need different approaches, other than what has been described. Our goal is to find a way to make DP cells proliferate and maintain their folliculogenecity. We can use growth factors or transcription factors; or alternatively using iPSC approach to make more DP cells which I think is very much possible."

[Thinning87]

From Dr. Xu:


"To make hair follicle, DP cells are required as you know. DP cells can only be isolated from hair follicles. One hair follicle, one DP cell aggregate. To make more hair follicles, you will need more DP cells aggregates. One recent study (Higgins et al., 2013) showed that DP cells can maintain their follicular genetic capacity if they are cultured in 3D. If you ready the paper carefully, they used passage 2-3 cells to make DP cell aggregate in the culture. Since each DP aggregate contains many cells, it means that this procedure can maintain DP cell folliculogenecity, but not necessarily make more DP cell aggregates. Therefore, the auhtors may or may not be able to make more DP cell aggregates (and more hair follicles) than the original hair follicles that they have taken out from the patients.

Foreskin is very different than scalp. Foreskin is usually from infants and we found that there are lots of stem cells in the foreskin, but the number of stem cells are far less in adult scalp. Thus, transplant the DP cell aggregates to scalp will not work in adult.

To make more DP cells and keep these DP cell with folliculogenecity, we need different approaches, other than what has been described. Our goal is to find a way to make DP cells proliferate and maintain their folliculogenecity. We can use growth factors or transcription factors; or alternatively using iPSC approach to make more DP cells which I think is very much possible."

Thanks for sharing and thank you very much for your effort.

I received a reply from kickstarter's support team, saying this type of project is not suitable for them.

I don't know any Japanese or have any friends that do, but I am sure someone else here on this site does, or a japanese forum on hair loss would be a good place to open a thread and just ask.

I am still available for any help. I noted what you said about a twitter account, but that would take place only after having the crowdfunding campaign started.

By the way which crowdfunding site are you using?

[sascha]

I'm not skeptical, this science is real and will eventually cure baldness. I'm not that excited, because in terms of my own lifetime I doubt it will have much impact. However, that's not a reason to not help make it happen.

Question: Does anyone read japanese or is anyone in japan? I am going to go ahead with the crowdfunding for dr. xu unless I feel like Tsuji is closer, and is willing to do the same kind of thing. (which I think they might be)

However, I can't read their contact form or get in touch with Tsuji, if anyone can, then please help out. I'm just waiting to hear from dr. xu about any restrictions penn medicine might have on funding. I would not worry about FDA etc etc, once the science is completed then we will probably have to wait for regulation, and can't change that. However, once one person knows how to do it, it will help other countries and teams do the same thing. penn medicine is not a private company, and is not looking to keep anything secret.

Thank you for the reply
I am always really confused when I read through the newest stuff. Some say we are close, some say we are far away. I am 21 now, and I really wanna be excited, because to be optimistic is always better than "realistic".

I don´t speak japanese, but I tried to translate the contact file of:
http://www.tsuji-lab.com/en/research/organ/hair.html -> Contact
If this isn´t good enough I try to make it better when I get home from University ( I wrote it on my phone ).

CONTACT

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Inquiry: □ Research Projects □ Research alliance □ Other

Name: ____________________________

Instituton: ○ Educational institutions ○ Research institute ○ Press ○ Other

Parent organization: _____________________________
(company name, university name, etc)

E-mail address: ________________________

Address: _______________
_______________________________________

Phone number: __________________________


Questions and Inquiry: ________________________

[Dazza]

I don´t speak Japanese, but I tried to translate the contact file of:
http://www.tsuji-lab.com/en/research/organ/hair.html

Just to let you know the Google Chrome browser will automatically translate the page for you.

Cheers for keeping us in contact sdsurfin. This is a huge help.

[sascha]

Just to let you know the Google Chrome browser will automatically translate the page for you.

Cheers for keeping us in contact sdsurfin. This is a huge help.

Ah okay. Thanks for that and thanks to sdsurfin of course. he seems to have a high success-rate when contacting researchers and companies.

[hellouser]

Just a heads up, I'm in the process of creating a comprehensive list of everything that would need to be done from start to finish for a PROPERLY run crowdfunding campaign. Everything from the name of the campaign right down to the day of how we transfer collected funds to an appropriate organization capable of creating a commercially available cure.

It just dawned on me that collecting funds, allocating them and then transferring the donations is something we'd need to be prepared for. If anyone knows of a good crowdfunding site that allows easy management and relaxed legal stuff as well as the ability to integrate the donations directly on a dedicated website through an API would be ideal as it would keep everything on a single site.

I'll be posting the full list over at *** as the forum allows for me to edit posts and the first post will need frequent editing as it lists willing contributors responsibilities (they will be added, removed, changed, etc).

[Thinning87]

Thanks for doing it. If it helps, I sent an inquiry to kickstarter a few days ago explaining that we'd like to raise money for a third party and they told me they can't do it, without explaining why

[Dazza]

Thanks for doing it. If it helps, I sent an inquiry to kickstarter a few days ago explaining that we'd like to raise money for a third party and they told me they can't do it, without explaining why

This article help?

http://www.newstatesman.com/business/2012/11/can-we-crowdfund-clinical-research

Might be worth looking into this "cureLauncher"

[hellouser]

Thanks for doing it. If it helps, I sent an inquiry to kickstarter a few days ago explaining that we'd like to raise money for a third party and they told me they can't do it, without explaining why

http://www.curefunders.com/en

http://www.indiegogo.com/

We'll need to do some research on which crowdfunding platform is best to use. Looks like kickstarter is DEFINITELY out. I like that indiegogo offers tax deductions for US donators for non-profit organizations. That's a nice small perk....

Heads up, we MAY need to register as a non-profit organization.

[NeedHairASAP]

Just a heads up, I'm in the process of creating a comprehensive list of everything that would need to be done from start to finish for a PROPERLY run crowdfunding campaign. Everything from the name of the campaign right down to the day of how we transfer collected funds to an appropriate organization capable of creating a commercially available cure.

It just dawned on me that collecting funds, allocating them and then transferring the donations is something we'd need to be prepared for. If anyone knows of a good crowdfunding site that allows easy management and relaxed legal stuff as well as the ability to integrate the donations directly on a dedicated website through an API would be ideal as it would keep everything on a single site.

I'll be posting the full list over at *** as the forum allows for me to edit posts and the first post will need frequent editing as it lists willing contributors responsibilities (they will be added, removed, changed, etc).

please see the crowdfund link I posted to save yourself some time.

There are crowdfund sites for medical stuff like this. Kickstarter wont take it. Indiegogo may. There are others.

[HairBane]

http://www.curefunders.com/en

http://www.indiegogo.com/

We'll need to do some research on which crowdfunding platform is best to use. Looks like kickstarter is DEFINITELY out. I like that indiegogo offers tax deductions for US donators for non-profit organizations. That's a nice small perk....

Heads up, we MAY need to register as a non-profit organization.

Indiegogo is definitely the next best thing after kickstarter in terms of the size of the user base. Infact, the Ubuntu phone on IGG is the most crowdfunded project of all time, I think. There probably is a way for us to use kickstarter, it's just that we'd need the doctor himself to be fully involved.

If not, indiegogo also has the 'flexible funding' option, which would be good. That means that even if we don't make the goal amount of money, we still get everything that's been donated so far, which kickstarter don't offer afaik.