Showh some Support for an interview with the german researchers at the TU Berlin.

[Mojo Risin]

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,2912821,00.html

That's a new article from today citing Roland Lauster but I have no idea what it's talking about (and it's kinda ****ed up with Google Translation). I think it's talking about skin regeneration and recreating the epidermis.

I think Roland Lauster research is funded by German government or some charity, I may be wrong though.

[Mojo Risin]

But the fact that the guy is Norwood 7 kinda cheers me up haha ! It's not like George Cotsarelis who's probably 40-50 years old and showing no sign of baldness.

Lauster could benefit from this stem cell treatment :P and he knows how losing hair sucks.

[Mojo Risin]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21277344

Across many tissues and organs, the ability to create an organoid, the smallest functional unit of an organ, in vitro is the key both to tissue engineering and preclinical testing regimes. The hair follicle is an organoid that has been much studied based on its ability to grow quickly and to regenerate after trauma. But hair follicle formation in vitro has been elusive. Replacing hair lost due to pattern baldness or more severe alopecia, including that induced by chemotherapy, remains a significant unmet medical need. By carefully analyzing and recapitulating the growth conditions of hair follicle formation, we recreated human hair follicles in tissue culture that were capable of producing hair. Our microfollicles contained all relevant cell types and their structure and orientation resembled in some ways excised hair follicle specimens from human skin. This finding offers a new window onto hair follicle development. Having a robust culture system for hair follicles is an important step towards improved hair regeneration as well as to an understanding of how marketed drugs or drug candidates, including cancer chemotherapy, will affect this important organ.

------------------------------

Man this is huge, why is nobody talking about this ?

[UK_]

Die aber erfüllt dann auch nur einen Teil der Funktionen einer vollständigen, lebendigen Haut. Michael Meurer vom Universitätsklinikum Dresden: "Die neue Haut die entsteht, ist eine volle Epidermis, eine volle Oberhaut. Inklusive der Hornschicht, die für den Schutz der Haut so wichtig ist. Sie enthält aber keine Haare – denn das fragen Patienten oft – die werden nicht gebildet. Auch keine Schweiß- oder Talgdrüsen." Also auch hier nur ein Teilerfolg. Schwitzen ist gesund und: Schweiß- und Talgdrüsen sind notwendig für eine intakte, lebende Haut. Sie ist das Organ, mit dem wir tasten und empfinden.

New skin but no follicles or sebaceous glands?

Bollocks!

Die Hoffnung der Wissenschaftler: eine vollständige Haut soll wachsen, mit Haaren, Schweiß- und Talgdrüsen

Hope? I thought they had already done it last December & in their March release (@Mojo Risin post) - what gives?

From what I gather, after all the hype last year they're still in the initial stages of "testing", I give credit to these guys though, the number of our troops coming home from the middle east, Afghanistan and Iraq with horrific injuries would really benefit from this type of treatment.

This guy deserves more than a nobel prize if he can pull off growing a fully functioning section of skin as he proposes.

But holistic developments are still racing onward:

http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/09/in-medical-first-doctors-implant-lab-grown-synthetic-trachea-into-patient/

http://singularityhub.com/2011/07/09/make-your-own-chocolates-at-home-with-3d-chocolate-printer-video/

[UK_]

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21277344

Across many tissues and organs, the ability to create an organoid, the smallest functional unit of an organ, in vitro is the key both to tissue engineering and preclinical testing regimes. The hair follicle is an organoid that has been much studied based on its ability to grow quickly and to regenerate after trauma. But hair follicle formation in vitro has been elusive. Replacing hair lost due to pattern baldness or more severe alopecia, including that induced by chemotherapy, remains a significant unmet medical need. By carefully analyzing and recapitulating the growth conditions of hair follicle formation, we recreated human hair follicles in tissue culture that were capable of producing hair. Our microfollicles contained all relevant cell types and their structure and orientation resembled in some ways excised hair follicle specimens from human skin. This finding offers a new window onto hair follicle development. Having a robust culture system for hair follicles is an important step towards improved hair regeneration as well as to an understanding of how marketed drugs or drug candidates, including cancer chemotherapy, will affect this important organ.

------------------------------

Man this is huge, why is nobody talking about this ?

You should read the full article, it will blow your mind what they actually did.

"By producing hair follicles in vitro with a robust, reproducible
method, we have created a good jumping-off point for further
work on at least two application areas: cultivating hair for transplantation
for cosmetic purposes (e.g. treating severe alopecia,
male pattern baldness or chemotherapy-induced alopecia) or for
medium-to high-throughput screening of drug candidates to determine
their impact on hair growth."

"A cell therapy approach with well-engineered microfollicles
could be used that involved removing only a small quantity
of autologous (self) follicle-forming cells and expanding them ex
vivo before reimplantation.Patients with severe alopecia characterized
by a limited number of transplantable hair follicle units
could benefit from higher quantities of such hair follicle equivalents.
Since hair follicles are immune-privileged sites with a very
low expression of MHC class Ia antigens and suppressed MHC IIdependent
antigen presentation in addition to the local production
of immunosuppressants capable of downregulatingMHCI (TGF-1,
-MSH) (Paus et al., 2005), the tantalizing possibility exists of creating
allogeneic (non-self) transplants on a one-at-a-time or even
off-the-shelf basis."

[CVAZBAR]

Wow! I wonder how long it will take them to finish this.

[RichardDawkins]

I say three to four years, but only if the first test runs are according to plan.

This thing is indeed a huge thing, because firstly its designed to simulate a living follicles which can abandon animal testings, therefore those follicles are built to resist.

In other words THIS if finished, is THE final cure for all time. I read somewhere that they can achieve around 10.000 follicles out of 100 extracted as an estimation.

This is effin good and plausible. So in other words with a slight bit of salt i say we have a solution, when we see HST as the first HM technology.

[Mojo Risin]

And hair transplant surgeons would still have jobs ... everybody would win with this (except the drug companies but who gives a **** about those crooks).

[CVAZBAR]

I say three to four years, but only if the first test runs are according to plan.

This thing is indeed a huge thing, because firstly its designed to simulate a living follicles which can abandon animal testings, therefore those follicles are built to resist.

In other words THIS if finished, is THE final cure for all time. I read somewhere that they can achieve around 10.000 follicles out of 100 extracted as an estimation.

This is effin good and plausible. So in other words with a slight bit of salt i say we have a solution, when we see HST as the first HM technology.

So the hairs are multiplied but need to be implanted? So we still need the art of the doctor? Wish it was a different approach but if they can grow robust hairs that last forever, I guess we can't complain. You add this with the rest of the big companies, it seems that we will not be bald all our lives. We might have better hair than when we were 15 ha. I hope!

[RichardDawkins]

I rather have this to be surgical transplanted then eat Finasterid for the rest of my life. Hair can be restored but if you are impotent......well this is something which will really drive you insane and suicidal.

A bald head can look good but a limb noodle? I dont think so

[CVAZBAR]

I rather have this to be surgical transplanted then eat Finasterid for the rest of my life. Hair can be restored but if you are impotent......well this is something which will really drive you insane and suicidal.

A bald head can look good but a limb noodle? I dont think so

Oh there is NO DOUBT about that. Propecia is a ****ing joke. Anything is better than that shit. I just want a procedure that WILL work for everyone. My biggest fear is watching all these companies fail. They are only valuable if they work for everyone. I don't want any of them to be like Propecia. They claim only 2% get side's but we know that's bullshit or that it has an 80% chance to work. All that is bullshit. We need something that will work for EVERYONE. That's a true cure. Something that will give Dick Vitale his hair back, or at least something close to it. We just need something that will benefit most and it has to be MUCH MUCH better than any of the crap we have now.

[PatientlyWaiting]

And hair transplant surgeons would still have jobs ... everybody would win with this (except the drug companies but who gives a **** about those crooks).

And me because I can not even afford a current HT, let alone that one that will probably be even more expensive. Still, good luck with this, it sounds like solution to any one who will be able to afford it. Maybe who knows by then I will be able to afford it.

[UK_]

I say three to four years, but only if the first test runs are according to plan.

This thing is indeed a huge thing, because firstly its designed to simulate a living follicles which can abandon animal testings, therefore those follicles are built to resist.

In other words THIS if finished, is THE final cure for all time. I read somewhere that they can achieve around 10.000 follicles out of 100 extracted as an estimation.

This is effin good and plausible. So in other words with a slight bit of salt i say we have a solution, when we see HST as the first HM technology.

Exactly, a few hairs could produce hundreds of follicles, the article really blew me away, the photo shots of the follicle are incredible, a fully functional follicle grown from two different types of scalp stem cells.

[Mojo Risin]

And me because I can not even afford a current HT, let alone that one that will probably be even more expensive. Still, good luck with this, it sounds like solution to any one who will be able to afford it. Maybe who knows by then I will be able to afford it.

It's still a couple years away, you have plenty of time to save money man. I know I'll have enough.

[UK_]

This is going to take far longer than a couple of years lol.