Anyone have any news from Lauster/Jahoda teams?

[Pray The Bald Away]

Well it looks like I better start saving up.

[Desmond84]

Another piece of the puzzle solved!

According to the latest study published on April 1st, WNT-10b maintains DP gene expressions for hair induction for up to 10 passages!!! That is better than the Chinese that was reported several weeks ago. This is what Aaron Gardiner was working on but gave up and switched to cancer research.

Guys, the Japs are all over this!!! It's amazing Here's the link to the paper:

http://link.springer.com/protocol/10.1007/7651_2016_319

Maintenance of Dermal Papilla Cells by Wnt-10b In Vitro
BY Yukiteru Ouji, Masahide Yoshikawa

Let's hope the Japanese speed ahead with this discovery and blow people's expectations right out of the park

[nameless]

Okay so I read the whole study the other night and here's the breakdown.

Their main goal was to produce high passage (>8) human DP cells (hDP) that maintain their hair inductive properties.

Now their main focus was to enhance the culturing material NOT growth medium. They simply used a newer, much less adhesive material to culture the hDP cells and that small tweak led to inductive high passage DP cells!

Interestingly enough, not only the DP cells organised themselves into DP spheroids in these wells, they also started secreting extra-cellular matrix (chemical soup) which was almost identical to DP cells in an anagen phase!!!

Their method also allows for very tight control of DP sphere diameter to ensure highly accurate and efficient mass production. I remember one of the biggest problems Dr Atac & Jahoda were having in 2014 was the varying sizes of spheroids that were forming. So they had to measure them under the microscope and only use the ones that were in range. This made things very inefficient and highly time consuming. They manage to mass produce DP spheroids in the range of 150-250 micro-meters which is identical to DP spheres found in human scalp!

Next they wanted to see if they can induce hair follicles. You can check this in TWO ways:

1. Hair-inductivity Markers: Alpha-phosphatase, Alpha-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA) & Neural cell Adhesion molecule (NCAM), OR
   
2. Combining them with multipotent epithelial stem cells and see if they form a new hair follicle.

Now, all the DP spheres were showing all the correct markers. So they went one step further and combined them with newborn mice epidermal cells and then implanted them into nude mice.

The results: After 5 weeks, abundant newly formed BLACK hair follicles erupted as shown in the picture below:



So what's next: They are going to combine them with different types of human multipotent epithelial stem cells and see if they can form a hair follicle from scratch in the lab! Let's hope this works

Cheers guys, That's my summary. Hope that explains all your questions about what this study entailed.

- Des

So then your analysis would support my posit that Jahoda had not achieved full trichogenicity in mass pass culture but now the Chinese have. And this would be a huge leap forward. And if you're right then I think they'll have the final kinks worked out by 2018 and the technology would be in the Asian market by 2021 or 2022 at the latest. If you're analysis is correct then there is only mop-up basic science work remaining and then they can move to actual human studies in 2018 or 2019 at the very latest and then they could market it 2 or 3 years later at the most.

[mlamber5]

I don't think that is the right approach to their work. They're all feeding each other valuable information that brings the entire research forward month by month. Every paper they publish helps the next team carry it one step further. There's always a threshold in medical research before you can get private funding to get your work to clinical trials. We are slowly approaching that threshold and all of that is thanks to Jahoda, Lauster, Tsuji, etc etc.

If they manage to create de novo hair follicles in the lab using high passage cells by 2020, I'm more than certain MPB will be a fashion statement by 2025!

Good breakdown Desmond. There is no question in my mind whatsoever we are close to having this be a thing of the past. Exciting times indeed.

[Desmond84]

also, who cares about jahoda anymore. yes, he was a pioneer back then and gave some important insight on what DP cells are capable of, but since then nothing came out of it. dr. gardner even left his team as he probably saw that they won't move mountains anymore.
if jahoda wanted to cure hairloss he could have made it a decade ago. he once even said that their goal is not to cure hairloss nor at least create a few hairs in the lab. what they do is just research, all day long, every weekday, year by year. if they find something interesting in the lab, they pack it into a paper and give it to some journalists. this ensures they get some kind of attention by the media which is always good for scientists or researchers in general.

the same goes with TU berlin. lauster and co. would have the skills to bring that thing forward, but what they do is just tinkering around with cell cultures, most of the time probably some pointless trial and error culturing.
this is what researchers do, and they get paid by government funds or investors, but in this case i think they don't have any investors as they haven't any promising stuff.
so one could ask, why do they send e.g. dr. beren atac to the hair congress if they don't have any serious plan to cure hairloss? it's relatively simple. for universities and research teams in general it is important to show presence on such events. it's kind of marketing. it's good for researchers' reputation to show some nice work here and there. in the end, this also increases the chance for further funds in future. but in the end, those powerpoint presentations they give at the congress are just pointless in most cases.
i just learned that hard facts recently from a german professor which has a lot of experience in many different fields of research. he gave me a lot of insight into this business which was very sad and dissapointing to hear. it's just common practice for researchers and universities to do it this way. 99% of all research and also of all presented stuff at such congresses is basicly meaningless and is just done to show presence and create some business connections.
since a few weeks when i learn about that methodology i see the world with different eyes.

to summarize it: forget about jahoda and team lauster. they never intended to really cure hairloss. this was wishful thinking from all of us.

I don't think that is the right approach to their work. They're all feeding each other valuable information that brings the entire research forward month by month. Every paper they publish helps the next team carry it one step further. There's always a threshold in medical research before you can get private funding to get your work to clinical trials. We are slowly approaching that threshold and all of that is thanks to Jahoda, Lauster, Tsuji, etc etc.

If they manage to create de novo hair follicles in the lab using high passage cells by 2020, I'm more than certain MPB will be a fashion statement by 2025!

[Desmond84]

Chinese Study summary

Some posters at various sites are saying the new Chinese technique is NOT producing better hairs than Jahoda did but that is not my interpretation of the Chinese results. Some are saying that the hairs are still without color and aren't the right size and other such
problems. But my understanding is that the Chinese are saying that they are producing hairs that are good quality. Am I missing something? I haven't seen the whole study.

Okay so I read the whole study the other night and here's the breakdown.

Their main goal was to produce high passage (>8) human DP cells (hDP) that maintain their hair inductive properties.

Now their main focus was to enhance the culturing material NOT growth medium. They simply used a newer, much less adhesive material to culture the hDP cells and that small tweak led to inductive high passage DP cells!

Interestingly enough, not only the DP cells organised themselves into DP spheroids in these wells, they also started secreting extra-cellular matrix (chemical soup) which was almost identical to DP cells in an anagen phase!!!

Their method also allows for very tight control of DP sphere diameter to ensure highly accurate and efficient mass production. I remember one of the biggest problems Dr Atac & Jahoda were having in 2014 was the varying sizes of spheroids that were forming. So they had to measure them under the microscope and only use the ones that were in range. This made things very inefficient and highly time consuming. They manage to mass produce DP spheroids in the range of 150-250 micro-meters which is identical to DP spheres found in human scalp!

Next they wanted to see if they can induce hair follicles. You can check this in TWO ways:

1. Hair-inductivity Markers: Alpha-phosphatase, Alpha-smooth muscle actin (alpha-SMA) & Neural cell Adhesion molecule (NCAM), OR
   
2. Combining them with multipotent epithelial stem cells and see if they form a new hair follicle.

Now, all the DP spheres were showing all the correct markers. So they went one step further and combined them with newborn mice epidermal cells and then implanted them into nude mice.

The results: After 5 weeks, abundant newly formed BLACK hair follicles erupted as shown in the picture below:



So what's next: They are going to combine them with different types of human multipotent epithelial stem cells and see if they can form a hair follicle from scratch in the lab! Let's hope this works

Cheers guys, That's my summary. Hope that explains all your questions about what this study entailed.

- Des

[joachim]

More conspiracy theorist nonsense as far as I'm concerned. There's a number of reasons why there isn't a cure for hairloss but by far the biggest is because the science just isn't there yet and geneticists and biochemists just haven't cracked the code because it's exceptionally difficult and intricate. I suppose a large part of that ties directly into a lack of funding and that stems partly from a lack of serious interest/ public pressure but the main reason is just that it's very, very hard to do.

Saying that anybody could have "cured hairloss" ten years ago but lacks the motivation to do so makes no sense whatsoever when you think about it. Because these research teams could continue to publish their findings along the way to keep grant money rolling in while keeping their eye on the multi-billion dollar prize at the end of the the tunnel. That's what's at stake here for the scientists; because make no mistake about it, if a private group ever truly comes up with an affordable cure to MPB, it's central figures immediately catapult into the group of the wealthiest people on the planet. There's no conspiracy against bald men, you're just psychologically wounded from this sh.itty condition and using that as a means of blaming others.

don't get me wrong. i didn't mean it in a way that i think the cure is held back by scientists, like a conspiracy. because it's so hard to crack the code, with countless setbacks, nobody takes the research serious anymore it seems to me. of course if someone in the lab accidently finds the cure they will try to release and monetize it.
but the efforts taken by researchers are so limited that there is no serious chance to find the cure in a reasonable systematic way. especially when looking at jahoda and lauster. they saw how hard it is and practically gave up already. there is no serious eagerness and plan to find and release a cure anymore. those little and very limited experiments they are conducting in the labs are simply not enough to crack that beast. it's like: let's try this and that, and maybe one day in future we'll find out the right way. if we don't find the cure, nobody cares, as everybody knows how hard it is. and as we are no private company where every wasted year means a lot of wasted money, we have no risk at doing what we do all day. we have all the time we need.

[Arashi]

More conspiracy theorist nonsense as far as I'm concerned. There's a number of reasons why there isn't a cure for hairloss but by far the biggest is because the science just isn't there yet and geneticists and biochemists just haven't cracked the code because it's exceptionally difficult and intricate. I suppose a large part of that ties directly into a lack of funding and that stems partly from a lack of serious interest/ public pressure but the main reason is just that it's very, very hard to do.

Saying that anybody could have "cured hairloss" ten years ago but lacks the motivation to do so makes no sense whatsoever when you think about it. Because these research teams could continue to publish their findings along the way to keep grant money rolling in while keeping their eye on the multi-billion dollar prize at the end of the the tunnel. That's what's at stake here for the scientists; because make no mistake about it, if a private group ever truly comes up with an affordable cure to MPB, it's central figures immediately catapult into the group of the wealthiest people on the planet. There's no conspiracy against bald men, you're just psychologically wounded from this sh.itty condition and using that as a means of blaming others.

Yeah I'd have to agree with you. It's just extremely difficult. Besides these groups have limited budgets and limited resources. It just takes (a lot of) time. Progress *is* being made, for decades DP cells couldnt be cloned while retaining HF inducing capability. Now they can, even after 8 passages now, that's an accomplishment. But this research takes time and when they finally nail it, you're still looking at years and years of clinical trials.

[Trouse5858]

More conspiracy theorist nonsense as far as I'm concerned. There's a number of reasons why there isn't a cure for hairloss but by far the biggest is because the science just isn't there yet and geneticists and biochemists just haven't cracked the code because it's exceptionally difficult and intricate. I suppose a large part of that ties directly into a lack of funding and that stems partly from a lack of serious interest/ public pressure but the main reason is just that it's very, very hard to do.

Saying that anybody could have "cured hairloss" ten years ago but lacks the motivation to do so makes no sense whatsoever when you think about it. Because these research teams could continue to publish their findings along the way to keep grant money rolling in while keeping their eye on the multi-billion dollar prize at the end of the the tunnel. That's what's at stake here for the scientists; because make no mistake about it, if a private group ever truly comes up with an affordable cure to MPB, it's central figures immediately catapult into the group of the wealthiest people on the planet. There's no conspiracy against bald men, you're just psychologically wounded from this sh.itty condition and using that as a means of blaming others.

[joachim]

also, who cares about jahoda anymore. yes, he was a pioneer back then and gave some important insight on what DP cells are capable of, but since then nothing came out of it. dr. gardner even left his team as he probably saw that they won't move mountains anymore.
if jahoda wanted to cure hairloss he could have made it a decade ago. he once even said that their goal is not to cure hairloss nor at least create a few hairs in the lab. what they do is just research, all day long, every weekday, year by year. if they find something interesting in the lab, they pack it into a paper and give it to some journalists. this ensures they get some kind of attention by the media which is always good for scientists or researchers in general.

the same goes with TU berlin. lauster and co. would have the skills to bring that thing forward, but what they do is just tinkering around with cell cultures, most of the time probably some pointless trial and error culturing.
this is what researchers do, and they get paid by government funds or investors, but in this case i think they don't have any investors as they haven't any promising stuff.
so one could ask, why do they send e.g. dr. beren atac to the hair congress if they don't have any serious plan to cure hairloss? it's relatively simple. for universities and research teams in general it is important to show presence on such events. it's kind of marketing. it's good for researchers' reputation to show some nice work here and there. in the end, this also increases the chance for further funds in future. but in the end, those powerpoint presentations they give at the congress are just pointless in most cases.
i just learned that hard facts recently from a german professor which has a lot of experience in many different fields of research. he gave me a lot of insight into this business which was very sad and dissapointing to hear. it's just common practice for researchers and universities to do it this way. 99% of all research and also of all presented stuff at such congresses is basicly meaningless and is just done to show presence and create some business connections.
since a few weeks when i learn about that methodology i see the world with different eyes.

to summarize it: forget about jahoda and team lauster. they never intended to really cure hairloss. this was wishful thinking from all of us.

[Arashi]

NOTHING will help us in the next 10 years. mark my words.

That's what I think too. All this stuff is interesting but not relevant for us anyway. Highly experimental, not working yet and years and years of testing needed. Not going to happen within the next 10 years. And who knows, it might even take way longer than that.

[joachim]

Some posters at various sites are saying the new Chinese technique is NOT producing better hairs than Jahoda did but that is not my interpretation of the Chinese results. Some are saying that the hairs are still without color and aren't the right size and other such
problems. But my understanding is that the Chinese are saying that they are producing hairs that are good quality. Am I missing something? I haven't seen the whole study.

i'm not sure, but i think this achievement probably means nothing, again.
but we will never know anyway, as they never dare injecting it into a human scalp.
they will be playing around with mice for another decade.

also, if it's true, according to roger_that (you know him well), even sanford&burnham messed up because they misinterpreted their results. the resulting grown hairs were mouse hairs, although they injected the human cells into the nude mice. this is a huge dissapointment as it seemed as the real deal a few months ago. if sanford burnham really messed this thing up, then shame on them. they received millions of funds, probably also because of the latest breakthrough, but if the achievement wasn't real at all, then it's pointless anyway.

i learned that nothing will come from all those researchers worldwide who tinker around with hanging drops and other crap. probably we would already have found a cure if they would finally set up a small human trial. but it will not happen in the next 10 years.

kerastem is also a scam. it's time to face the truth. aape, prp, and now kerastem which is just a slightly advanced form of the adipose thing, this all is useless. it might be beneficial to some degree, but the results are negligible. we simply can't revive the dormant hairs with fat cells and growth factors.

replicel is the only thing left. if it turns out to be ineffective as well, then NOTHING will help us in the next 10 years. mark my words.

[nameless]

Sure. Trichogenicity just means the ability to induce a hair follicle. That's what Jahoda already achieved. Yet after expansion of the cells, genetic information was lost in the process. The cells still were able to induce a hair follice, but the resulting hair wasnt cosmetically viable: it was thin and without colour and I think it didnt even reach the surface.

Some posters at various sites are saying the new Chinese technique is NOT producing better hairs than Jahoda did but that is not my interpretation of the Chinese results. Some are saying that the hairs are still without color and aren't the right size and other such
problems. But my understanding is that the Chinese are saying that they are producing hairs that are good quality. Am I missing something? I haven't seen the whole study.

[allTheGoodNamesAreTaken]

passages just means dividing cells. So you take a cell, make 2 out of them, now you have 2 cells after on passage. Then you this again and you have 4 cells after 2 passages. So 8 passages just means they managed to make 256 dp cells out of just 1 dp cell and all those cells still were able to induce a hair follicle.

I guessed that was what a passage was, but what I was ultimately wondering was how far away this is from becoming a viable treatment, ie. how many passages is needed?

And is that really true, you only need 1 dp cell to grow a whole follicle? Did they grow 256 follicles? Or 1 follicle using all 256 cells? Or something in between?

[iaskdumbquestions]

Sure. Trichogenicity just means the ability to induce a hair follicle. That's what Jahoda already achieved. Yet after expansion of the cells, genetic information was lost in the process. The cells still were able to induce a hair follice, but the resulting hair wasnt cosmetically viable: it was thin and without colour and I think it didnt even reach the surface.

Thanks. Do you mind me asking what you do? You seem pretty knowledgable on this stuff, and I'm trying to learn.