Article on piloscopy...

[Hemo]

true. but the limitations is what makes me angry. also, many transplants have gone wrong in the past, with unsatisfying or even horrifying results.
there are only a handful of HT docs on the world who can create good results. that alone is a pain in the a.s.s.
if you are new to the HT world and don't do research for weeks and months in forums like this, the chance is very high to get a HT done with bad results. happened to two of my friends.

and with HTs being pointless, i mean that in a few years with stem cell or wounding approaches leading to a cure, transplants will be soon a thing of the past. it's only an intermediate step until the full cure is here. simply because there is no other and better option.

this is similar to hybrid cars which have always been pointless because everyone knew at that time already that only the full-electric car is the future. hybrid cars are fuc* ing complex and expensive, but the industry tried to bridge the gap until electric cars get mainstream. tesla did the first step already and showed the world how to do it. now the others have to catch up and in a few years, when the battery price is reduced to a reasonable price, then there's no other way to go.
and still, some desperate car makers like toyota are trying to push their hydrogen fuel cell cars as the next revolution. this is just dumb, but also a kind of intermediate step to try push some good revenue for another 10 years.

and now, the time has come that HTs and pilofocus are getting more and more pointless. only a matter of years, but soon the waiting game and nightmare will be over.

Why do you (and others) consistently say "only a few more years"? There is absolutely nothing that's shown promising results in humans that are equal to or better than fin, minox or a HT. Sure, there are a few things that look promising (scientifically), but can you name one product that actually has results available that look good? It's good to be positive, but I see a HT as being the only long-term option for awhile (especially when you consider they're still improving), though I hope I'm wrong.

[Occulus]

true. but the limitations is what makes me angry. also, many transplants have gone wrong in the past, with unsatisfying or even horrifying results.
there are only a handful of HT docs on the world who can create good results. that alone is a pain in the a.s.s.
if you are new to the HT world and don't do research for weeks and months in forums like this, the chance is very high to get a HT done with bad results. happened to two of my friends.

and with HTs being pointless, i mean that in a few years with stem cell or wounding approaches leading to a cure, transplants will be soon a thing of the past. it's only an intermediate step until the full cure is here. simply because there is no other and better option.

this is similar to hybrid cars which have always been pointless because everyone knew at that time already that only the full-electric car is the future. hybrid cars are fuc* ing complex and expensive, but the industry tried to bridge the gap until electric cars get mainstream. tesla did the first step already and showed the world how to do it. now the others have to catch up and in a few years, when the battery price is reduced to a reasonable price, then there's no other way to go.
and still, some desperate car makers like toyota are trying to push their hydrogen fuel cell cars as the next revolution. this is just dumb, but also a kind of intermediate step to try push some good revenue for another 10 years.

and now, the time has come that HTs and pilofocus are getting more and more pointless. only a matter of years, but soon the waiting game and nightmare will be over.

You're dreaming if you think a cure is right around the corner. It's not - it's at least seven to ten years away, and that's if everything goes smoothly. So until then, what are you going to do? Suffer for an eight of your life while you wait for something that may or may not arrive? Some people don't feel like wasting a good chunk of the best years of their life when there is a viable option in the form of a hair transplant? Transplants can be transformative in a way that no other current treatments can be. There are drawbacks, but Piloscopy seems to address at least on of the big ones - scars.

[Renee]

I agree with hemo. All the cell based therapies are still in the research phase except for replicel. Dr wesley has achieved a monumental feet in hair restoration industry and We should all be thankful to him. His method will drive down the cost of fue and fut procedures dramatically. On the other hand, doctors who offer his method will charge a premium.

Scarless hair transplant is huge, piloscopy here I come!!

[Swooping]

we already know that hair follicle regneration from two splitted halves is possible, but what many seem to forget is the resulting diameter of the regenerated follicles.
until now nobody was able to regenerate a follicle with nearly the same diameter. the diameter was in all cases around 30 to 50% thinner.
a 30% smaller diameter means that the overall volume of the single hair is halved. it looks extremely thin then. diameter is what gives the hair robustness and volume.

so, if dr. wesley can't regenerate the splitted halves with at least 90% of it's initial diameter, then it's totally useless. i'm not sure if acell and similar mixtures are able to do that.

i think, donor regeneration is a dead end.
if wesley could achieve the required 90% diameter consistently, then it would be a defacto cure.
if not, then pilofocus is almost pointless anyway, like hair transplants in general.
i hope the era of hair transplants will end in a few years when we finally see the real cure happing (with wounding or iPS approach).
i'm sick of discussing stone-age treatments like hair transplants.

The italian study notes the following (http://www.researchgate.net/publicat...ons_Involved);

We found that the caliber of hairs re-generated from entire follicles was 96.1% with respect to original donor hairs (100%). The new hairs obtained from bisected follicles were slightly finer than the donor hairs, although we found no difference in caliber between regenerated hairs de-rived from the upper (75.378.2%) or lower portion (74.474.1%) (Table 2).

This means only a ~5% decrease of hair caliber.. Not much at all.

Hair transplants furthermore have come a long way imo. Good results are indistinguishable. I agree with you that regenerative therapies are really taking up pace now and will eventually provide a cure. However this will still take pretty damn long unfortunately. Donor doubling would be indeed a defacto cure and extremely awesome. Perhaps a reality someday perhaps a dream. However the proof of concept is there and the best thing is that hair transplant surgeons have access to perfect biological models; humans. So they can rapidly trial & error. Way better than rodent models.

I already applaud FUT level graft quality and scarless surgery though.

[Swooping]

Btw Joachim you are right my mistake sorry. The decrease of diameter by duplication seems indeed bigger 25%, not 5%!

[joachim]

Btw Joachim you are right my mistake sorry. The decrease of diameter by duplication seems indeed bigger 25%, not 5%!

yes, that's the problem. 75% of the initial diameter sounds like a good deal, but in fact it's reducing the volume of the hair to poor 56%, practically halved volume, also less robust.
the only hope is that acell or other miracle compounds can change that.

additionally, i see another problem: when nigam came up with the donor doubling approach, i always wondered how would he guarantee that he inserts the bisected tiny halve (the lower portion, where only the dermal papilla is attached) into the recipient slits the right way? if you insert it the wrong way (pointing downwards) then you would have an ingrown hair which would be a huge problem. (there was a forum member here who experienced that horrible situation with many follicles because nigam worked with a choi implanter and during insertion the graft flipped and changed its direction, suddenly pointing downwards). was it boldy, who experienced that? i don't remember exactly. doctors couldn't help him and there's no way to find out where those hairs are located, to pull them out again.
i guess boldy has to live with that situation forever, causing pain and inflammation.
since that horrible event we never heard back from this user. has anybody heard from him in the meantime?

so now imagine you have to insert a tiny piece of dermal papilla into the slit with the right direction. theres no guarantee one can do that with 100% certainty.

so when dr. wesley manages to achieve regeneration with no significant reduction of diameter, then he has to figure out how to precisely place that bisected dermal papilla into the recipient sites.

BUT with pilofocus he could have an advantage now. because he comes from below the skin, he also extracts a nice portion of the underlying adipose (fat), which is beautifully yellow so it could be much easier to insert that portion, where the doc just have to be careful to put the yellow end first into the slit. still, there's potential for human error, but it's definitely easier with the yellow pudding attached to the papilla.

[joachim]

by the way, there is an easy explanation for this phenomenon on reduced diameter.
more than a year ago there was this researcher from jahoda's team, who found this forum and stayed for a few weeks to answer us some questions. i don't remember his name and i'm too lazy to search for that thread. however, he said this:

the hair diameter is directly related to the number of DP cells in the hair follicle. each follicle contains about 1000 to 2000 DP cells, if i remember correctly (but the number doesn't matter anyway).

if you split the hair follicle into two halves, then you split the number of cells. so lets say each halve then has around 500 cells afterwards. this results in a smaller diameter of course. yes, the bisected follicle can repair itself, to continue functioning after that, but you didn't force the DP cells to multiply themselves during that split. it may happen that some percentage of the cells really start dividing and multiplying themselves to some extent, but i wouldn't say they restore exactly all the lost 500 cells.

and now acell must come into play, as it is said to exactly promote those regenerative capability (maybe you remember the story of the man with the regrown finger, almost like a salamander, only with acell).
acell seems to magically tell or force the cells to regenerate the previos state of cells, which seems to be stored somehow in the cells, like a memory.
so if those DP cells multiply themselves again, to reach the previous number of 1000 cells, then we can expect full thickness of the diameter again.

not impossible in my opinion, but not yet proven. dr. wesley has to hurry up finally.

[stayhopeful]

Reply from Wesley's office:

Thanks to a recent $2.2M research grant, piloscopy is now likely scheduled to be made available with FDA Clearance in a few months. Not only will new patients benefit from this technique, but even patients undergoing current techniques (FUT and FUE) will benefit from this novel approach in a subsequent session.

[tedwuji]

Reply from Wesley's office:

Thanks to a recent $2.2M research grant, piloscopy is now likely scheduled to be made available with FDA Clearance in a few months. Not only will new patients benefit from this technique, but even patients undergoing current techniques (FUT and FUE) will benefit from this novel approach in a subsequent session.

Old news.

[Renee]

My question is how did he manage to get FDA approval so quick?

[hellouser]

My question is how did he manage to get FDA approval so quick?

He didn't, Pilofocus has been on his agenda for about 5 years.

[Hemo]

Reply from Wesley's office:

Thanks to a recent $2.2M research grant, piloscopy is now likely scheduled to be made available with FDA Clearance in a few months. Not only will new patients benefit from this technique, but even patients undergoing current techniques (FUT and FUE) will benefit from this novel approach in a subsequent session.

This is the same canned message they've been giving for awhile. I believe I got it back in Feb, when they also said they would start with true clinical trials (with 100 grafts) over the summer.

[stayhopeful]

This is the same canned message they've been giving for a while. I believe I got it back in Feb, when they also said they would start with true clinical trials (with 100 grafts) over the summer.

That's very disturbing that the office in the name of Dr. Wesley is disseminating unfactual information.

I sincerely hope Dr. Wesley sees this forum and addresses this issue as soon as possible

[Swooping]

by the way, there is an easy explanation for this phenomenon on reduced diameter.
more than a year ago there was this researcher from jahoda's team, who found this forum and stayed for a few weeks to answer us some questions. i don't remember his name and i'm too lazy to search for that thread. however, he said this:

the hair diameter is directly related to the number of DP cells in the hair follicle. each follicle contains about 1000 to 2000 DP cells, if i remember correctly (but the number doesn't matter anyway).

if you split the hair follicle into two halves, then you split the number of cells. so lets say each halve then has around 500 cells afterwards. this results in a smaller diameter of course. yes, the bisected follicle can repair itself, to continue functioning after that, but you didn't force the DP cells to multiply themselves during that split. it may happen that some percentage of the cells really start dividing and multiplying themselves to some extent, but i wouldn't say they restore exactly all the lost 500 cells.

and now acell must come into play, as it is said to exactly promote those regenerative capability (maybe you remember the story of the man with the regrown finger, almost like a salamander, only with acell).
acell seems to magically tell or force the cells to regenerate the previos state of cells, which seems to be stored somehow in the cells, like a memory.
so if those DP cells multiply themselves again, to reach the previous number of 1000 cells, then we can expect full thickness of the diameter again.

not impossible in my opinion, but not yet proven. dr. wesley has to hurry up finally.

Yes you are correct DP size does correlate with hair follicle size and type and it also acts as a instructive niche to many cell types including progenitors. However the funny thing is when you dissect a hair follicle horizontally you donīt touch the DP, it stays intact. Every study or proof of concept has shown horizontal cut being able to yield regeneration. Yet is seems to grow thinner which is interesting.You make some good points indeed with things that would need to be overcome. With the diameter of hair and implantation being a huge focus. Thanks.

[kirklandism]

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