Spencer Kobren Interviews Dr. Jerry Cooley | ACell MatriStem Plucked Hair

Great interview! Thanks for keeping on top of this, Spencer. This is truly groundbreaking. One question that wasn't addressed was the percentage of hairs that regrow in the recipient area. I've heard different numbers - Hitzig suggests 60-80%, I think Cooley at one time suggested 75%... Dr. Rassman on his blog says it's less than 50% -- though I take his claims with a grain of salt.. Dr. Cooley, if you're reading this, could you let us know? Thanks.

Wow this is amazing, if more research goes into using Matristem with plucked hairs, than 2010 may be the year that baldness was finally cured!!!

We are still speaking about a hair transplant right..

I think i understand the implications of this ultimately instead of having a strip off the back of your head, hairs are plucked and reintroduced and the regenerative process of the body takes over..

My concern is a number of things.. firstly price secondly we are still talking about a hair transplant with man made hairlines right? thirdly thickness, does it look natural..

I think most bald sufferers will agree with me when i say that we are looking to have the luscious, lavish hair we once use to have.. that to me is a cure to baldness.. now maybe im jumping the gun but ultimately does this process over this..

Maybe i dont understand the implications of this..

Yes, it's still a hair transplant. No, you probably aren't going to get the luscious, lavish hair you want. Of course we'd all like to rub some oil on our scalp and wake up as Brad Pitt the next day. Till then, this is a huge breakthrough offering immediate steps in the right direction. We should be celebrating, not moaning because it's not the holy grail. I'm still curious about the percentage of regrowth though..

Definitely something good. But this is not the holy grail... It is still a transplant and it's still very new. most of all I think it is going to be extremely extremely expensive.

But it's definitely a big step in the right direction

That's the problem with a lot of hair transplant advances; your hair will still only be as thick as a human hand is capable of implanting grafts. To be honest though, for me this might be enough. Transplants for those with enough hair look pretty good to me, and to be honest having hair like Brad Pitt will look odd by the time I'm 40!

Price is a big concern with this...

If it was like $5000 to fix my hairline, yeah...sure id definitely do it. But this with traveling will be 5-10x+ that ..

I think my limit would be about £20,000. To be honest, I just need to learn to be patient because there will definitely be a non-surgical solution soon, whether it is Histogen or something else. Although I believe hair transplants work, I have no particular desire to go through with one because I don't like operations!

FUE has a low yield, this is fact.
FUT leaves scarring and just seems somewhat brutal to me in a way. I just don't want someone cutting a part of my head at the back it's just weird.


But yeah... they work but really I dno if it's worth it.

I must admit I do wonder whether a top of the range wig would be more appropriate. I don't like the idea of wearing hair, but the alternative doesn't bear thinking about.

'It's just weird'? You complain about losing your hair and yet you 'don't want anyone touching the back of you head'.. Yes, we would all love to have our cake and eat it too. You go ahead and wait for the miracle cream - I'm gonna take advantage of what science is offering now.. Which is a non-invasive technique that PLUCKS my hair and reimplants it in the front with high yield - for the SAME price as FUE. If you think that's too much to bear to fix your hairloss problem, then I guess your hairloss isn't that big a problem for you. All the best.

Nothing says that graft implementation will always be done by hand.

Interview with Dr. Cooley about Acell seems shockingly promising, but I have a few questions to wonder about.

A. What is the projected success growth rate % of these replanted Acell treated "plucked" hairs?

B. I think he said in the interview that the largest transplant done this way was like 1500 hairs, which I'm guessing create new follicular units at sites transplanted after treated with Acell and replanted. One of the questions posed was something like "if transplanted to a bald region affected by DHT, will the new transplants hair unit be receptive or immune to DHT?" He didn't answer this clearly, and merely said "I have a hunch it will be permanent"!?! Why is he offering up a transplant of 1500 hair on a woman as evidence, do this on a bald man.. and the answer will be quickly known!!!

That being said... I hope to god he is right in his hunch... could be HUGE!! Can't wait to hear more!

I transcribed the entire Interview

Jerry: I started working with this wound healing product about a year and a half ago, and initially got some promising results, its taken me definitely some time to understand it and understand what worked well and what didn’t as well as just to see long term results and one of the things ive been doing in the last few months is just making a real concerted effort to bring people back in which is not really that easy, but just to really look very closely at my results and I’ve just gotten that much more excited about it.

Spencer: well I guess the big buzz is everyone is you know asking if this something that’s actually regenerating hair you know Dr Gary Hitzig put out the initial press release a few months ago, it looked like this was almost the holy grail, this was going to be hair cloning, and from what I gather its not exactly the case.

Jerry: Yea, you know it really does require further explanation; the best way that I can describe it is this represents a very important piece of the puzzle, it is a breakthrough. Its an active area of regenerative medicine, hair restoration is just a very very tiny application, there using this product for all sort of applications which I can describe for you if your interested.

Spencer: absolutely

Jerry: Yea, but I have not documented new hair in other words a complete out of nothing hair follicle appearing were there wasn’t one

Spencer: right

Jerry: but, it does appear to be able to restore transacted or injured hair follicles

Spencer: really

Jerry: and something were very excited about which is to copy or what we call autoclone plucked hairs.

Spencer: Yea explain that, you know a lot of people have been writing us about that there been some stuff circulating online about that, I know that you’ve been doing hair plucking ,and know that ive read some stuff about Dr Hitzig experimenting with it as well, explain it to us what exactly is it.

Jerry: Sure the best way I can describe it is if you just look at the basic structure of the hair follicle there are two basic layers of cells around the hair shaft, the outer layer is what we call the mesenchymal layer and that’s what contains the dermal papilla; that’s what intercytex and Aderans are trying to isolate and culture and use for cloning applications and cell implants. The inner layer is what we call the epithelial layer and that where you have the bulge with the stem cells, the outer and inner root sheath and when you pluck a hair properly you can get this inner portion or the epithelia portion, now about ten years ago Dr. Hitzig began experimenting some of his patients who had multiple old transplants and had no donor hair to give he just got interested in the concept of plucking beard whiskers and using them as grafts and he had a pretty low rate of success, but once in a while it worked and he kept working over the years on ways to get it to work better, then a couple of years ago began using this product called acell and I had kept in touch with him over the years because I was very interested in this idea and once I heard about the acell I knew I had to get involved and the basic idea is this that when you pluck a hair its going to grow back from the site you plucked it because all of the elements inside are necessary to regenerate the hair follicle and anyone whos plucked there hairs knows it grows back, but the reason that it will grow where we planted it is that when we coat it with this acell product and then transplant it stimulates the bodies innate regenerative potential to rebuild the follicle that outer portion around the plucked graft.

Spencer: that’s amazing,

Jerry: it is amazing

Spencer: that really is, I mean that’s basically if this is truly consistently possible you would basically have unlimited donor

Jerry: Right, and it was just astounding and I knew a lot of people would be sceptical, and Dr. Hitzig although very excited about it you know didn’t really take the time to take macro photographs or biopsies and so thats some of the thins I wanted to do to really convince the sceptics.

Spencer: sure

Jerry: and so I was using a high powered attachment to my digital camera to document the photographic evidence that these hairs would grow and then I did a series of biopsies and worked with a very prominent dermatopathologist to analyze these biopsies to say what do these things look like under the microscope. And I can show some of those images and basically they look like normal hair follicles, Im trying to be careful not to overplay it, and I don’t want to overstate these results

Spencer: yea but its not like you just heard it through the grapevine, you actually were able to produce these results

Jerry: Correct

Spencer: okay

Jerry: yea, and prove for what I consider to be beyond a shadow of a doubt that this phenomenon occurs you simply cant look at these biopsy results and dispute what you see.

Spencer: Now are these plucked hairs growing into terminal hairs, full terminal hairs.

Jerry: yes, yea, indistinguishable

Spencer: wow,

Spencer: I will tell you that ive been in this industry for thirteen years and this is probably the most exciting news that ive ever heard, and im not just trying to over hype this. If this is what it is, if this is what you say it is this is monumental news.

Jerry: well I certainly think so , and I think so for two reasons, one I think the autocloning as it stands right now with the plucked grafts has clinical applications today. I mean im doing this in the clinic right now. But, I think more importantly it shows us something that you know until recently we hadn’t even thought of we were pursuing this idea of culturing dermal papilla and

Spencer: absolutely

Jerry: and applying and injecting them when the body has this miraculous regenerative potential and we can take this research this technology to the next level and learn how to trigger the body to regenerate hair follicles and in fact Dr. Anthony Atala who one of the worlds leading regenerative medicine experts was recently quoted in an article saying he thinks this is the direction that regenerative medicine is going, you know rather than constructing these complex organs in the laboratory and then putting them in or culturing all these cells that really the most promising direction is using these triggers and in this case acell using these triggers to get the body to regenerate.

Spencer: well first of all its an amazing sounding process and a) its you know its gotta be less expensive in the long run b) your not worrying about like you said regenerating these entire tiny little organs in a Petri dish

Jerry: right and you know the cell culturing process is incredibly complicated, and you know having these culturing facilities and so on, and whether or not it may turn out to be successful but, if there’s a simpler way it certainly would be much less expensive.

Spencer: I don’t mean to cut you off but this aderans must be looking at this and be thinking holy cow, you know we spent all this time this money and obviously going in a specific direction to make this happen, but I mean this could completely eclipse what they’ve been working on.

Jerry: well that’s one possible scenario, and another possible scenario is its going to take a combination of this technology and cultured cells so I think right now everything’s up for grabs, this is a breakthrough, but exactly what’s going to happen from here you know remains to be seen, it may be that will be using a combination of cells and extracellular matrix, but I think this is one critical piece of the puzzle.

Spencer: well id say you’ve always been a very diplomatic guy Dr. Cooley, I mean whats your gut tell you from what you’ve seen in your own practice.

Jerry: my gut tells me that his is where the action is at, this is what other researchers are focusing on for degenerative conditions and this is where we as you know people very interested in bringing this idea of hair restoration, this is where we should be heading, but im not, im not, I want to make it clear, im not, I don’t think this as of right now means the end of cell technology.

Spencer: right im actually surprised that im hearing this because I knew that this was happening, but I had no clue that you’ve had such great success with it, and I think that whats going to happen especially once this interview gets out a) your going to be inundated with phone calls, and I don’t want consumers and hair loss sufferers to think that okay now this out , there the holy grail is their Im going to be able to get unlimited donor supply, its going to take some time.

Jerry: oh absolutely, and I certainly that is not the message, this is in my opinion a breakthrough it is available now and it takes hair restoration to a whole new level in my opinion and it gives us options as will discuss as we get into my presentation, not just for this autocloning but just making current hair transplants that much better.

Spencer: I mean do you think that guys who are considering minimal procedures would be great candidates for something like this

Jerry: well this would probably be a good time to discuss unanswered questions, so we can create these new hair follicles we can duplicate hair follicles, are these hair follicles permanent? Are they subject to balding? Will they cycle normally? These are some important questions that I want to now that I know we can do it, these are the questions now that I want to look at is because they’re regenerated in the recipient area are they a hybrid? Will they show sensitivity to DHT? When they go through there growing phase of three years will they fall out and not come back? So one of the things im going to do is start plucking some of my plucked grafts you know that are growing and see if they regrow and just to make sure that they’re as durable and healthy as we want them to be.

Spencer: so as far as a timeline, when do you think, how long do you think its going to take for you to be comfortable in saying you know what this works, this works to the extent that you believe that we can give somebody a fuller head of hair without using some of the conventional methods.

Jerry: well ive very conservatively and very carefully starting introducing it into my practice that way, so ive started doing , you know ive stared off doing 100 test grafts, 200 test grafts, then 400 test grafts. My largest one to date is about 1500, and that’s an example of a women who had this really beautiful hair, she had had a prior STRIP with a bad experience at another clinic, came to see me we did a small STRIP with good results but even though she has this luxurious beautiful hair, her scalp is tight as a drum, so her option is basically FUE, and she heard about the plucking research and was interested so basically we did about 1500 grafts to her frontal scalp with plucking and a anticipating a good results. But that patient went into this process fully informed that yes its less invasive these are the advantages but we cant guarantee the permanence, you know I predict that they will be permanent but that will remain to be known, so anyone doing a new procedure

Spencer: even if it lasted three years, even if it lasted you know one growth cycle I mean to go back in to get it done obviously, there’s a cost issue involved, but if its relatively less invasive and you know theres not a tremendous amount of downtime you know you can kind of replace some of the hairs that might be lost over time, and I think thats always a possibility, yea its gonna be kind of like an ongoing process which isn’t the best case scenario but it would still beat being bald especially for a women.

Jerry: well I think time will tell and answer these questions, im certainly optimistic that these will be you know long lasting results.

Spencer: okay, well good.