ACell, a Current Review of Applications in Hair Transplant Surgery

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Originally Posted by Jerry Cooley, MD

Westonci and HairRobinHood

Thank you for the lively discussion of WNT. Doubtlessly the WNT pathway is critical in the formation of hair follicles. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the WNT pathway is activated when ACell coated plucked hair is implanted in the skin. However, I would be very cautious about adding exogenous WNT proteins as this may disturb the delicate balance of stimulatory/inhibitory factors present in this context. For example, it is well known that activation of WNT/beta-catenin is associated with tumor formation, which is why Cotsarelis' approach is requiring such careful animal studies and will be subjected to close regulatory scrutiny. In the past, some thought that Sonic Hedgehog stimulation had potential for hair loss treatment, but I believe that tumor formation occurred which shut down any further work on this. It may be that the Histogen approach, which uses a mix of embryonic proteins secreted by neonatal fibroblasts, is more desirable because that stimulatory/inhibitory system is already built in.

Regardless, use of either approach would require FDA supervised studies and should not be done by the surgeon at this time just to 'see what happens'. ACell is already FDA approved for wound healing and can be safely used as an adjunct to transplanting plucked hairs.

Thanks again for the thought provoking discussion.

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Sorry for bombarding you with millions of questions, but Im wondering how much you are charging per plucked hair. Even if you are not sure, could you estimate how much it would cost so that we could have an idea how much we should be saving for such procedure (and yes im aware that the results may or may not be permanent at this time).

Having said that, God bless you Dr. Cooley for your hard work, and I know that your name and Dr Hitzigs will go down in the history books for your contributions in this feild.

Westconi, I may be wrong but I get the sense that pricing questions are probably best directed to Dr. Cooley's office directly. It is just a phonecall after all! :) Dr. Cooley, thanks again for your participation here as well as your patience. Class act all the way.

I forgot to shout out to Dr. Hitzig as well! Sorry, Dr., I didn't see that you posted on here too. You're truly a pioneer in your field and given new hope to millions.

http://www.prweb.com/releases/haircl...web4840684.htm

In an upcoming article submitted to the Hair Transplant Forum International, Hitzig states, “Early results in transplant patients (where it is easier to obtain arterial blood from the surgical donor area) have shown that when MatriStem plus spun down arterial blood plasma or PRP are combined and then injected in thinning areas of the scalp that have not previously received a hair transplant, miniaturizing hairs appear to re-grow. The results are still very early, but make sense in light of previous reported PRP injection results.”


I haven't seen anyone discuss this press release in the forum yet. Increase regrowth in thinning areas seem to be another area where ACELL can be applied.

I've been in contact with Dr. hitzig earlier and he recommended that if I have a transplant to use an injection of A-cell and PRP to prevent further loss.

I've never heard of these two being used as a preventative treatment before? Does anyone have anymore information about it? Does it work better/worse than propecia?

Whenever our Plastic Surgeons perform a Transplant utilizing ACell, we automatically inject the surrounding thinning areas with the combination of ACell mixed in PRP or Arterial Serum plus Buffy Coat (where the Adult Stem Cells and Platelets plus nutrients are). We of course inform all patients of this addition and why we are doing this (preventative or possible regrowth of miniaturizing hairs). There is no extra charge for this either. By adding this to the transplant procedure since the patient is numbed anyway, we are getting good clinical feedback of it's efficacy. We have been very excited with the early (8 month) results, and are now performing independent injections of PRP plus ACell to those candidates with early or moderate thinning but obviously no shiny bald area. Propecia is an adjunct to this procedure and should not be stopped until we learn more about the mechanism of it's action. We hope this will be a better answer to thinning as we have not had to repeat any of these injections to date. Time will tell!

Thank you for your reply Dr. Hitzig.
Are you planning on displaying the results from these injections anywhere soon?

I always think it's encouraging when people actually take steps to develop the field of hair loss treatments. Because to be honest, for someone like me who is 23 years old, NW4, thinning in a NW6 pattern and possibly aiming for a full NW7 - there basically do not seem to be many options.

So I'd just like to say thank you to you, Dr Cooley and everyone else who are actually trying to come up with innovative new solutions.

Yes, I will post results.Give me until after the holidays as people are very engaged and unavailable. In January you will start seeing the "early" 9 month injection results. As I have combined transplants with injections in the thinning areas, I will point out the transplants vs. the injection only sites. Please bear with me, January will be here very soon.

Dr. Gary Hitzig Responds To Recent Concerns and Criticisms About The Use of ACell MatriStem In Surgical Hair Restoration.

Listen To The Segment

With all this talk about Acell, I am surprised that no one on this forum, including Spencer, has brought up the news this week about stem cell research.

I am referring to the report that stem cells have been used, for the very first time, to create a living hair follicle. This report comes from Ronald Lauster at Berlin Technical University. The news has been reported in the popular media during the past few days. Spencer, what do you think about this news?