Dr. Cotsarelis New Discovery that may finally cure Baldness (June 3rd, 2013)

[UK_]

I think some of you are jumping the gun here.

If new follicles are created, they will most likely form in the same way that their neighbouring follicles were formed, which leaves them just as vulnerable to all the same hair loss problems.

We don't need more follicles, we need to get existing follicles working for good.

In 2011, Follica released research that showed the bald scalp in men with androgenetic alopecia retains hair follicle stem cells but lacks CD200-rich and CD34-positive hair follicle progenitor cells. Due to this problem, the hair follicles are producing microscopic hairs beneath the surface of the skin, their research therefore is aimed at bringing to the market a solution that will enable said stem cells/hair follicles to 'reactive' by producing the necessary CD-200 and CD34-positive hair follicle progenitor cells.

By researching the cascade of events that takes place during the wound healing process, they may have just done so.

I think it will have to be a case of mild to medium scalp pertubation and timing an injection of FGF9 appropriately to nudge the immune response into the creation of a new hair follicle, this is true regenerative medicine here, instead of the body going down the route of creating a scar, we're finding the key compounds from nature to induce regeneration of organs (hair follicles).

It's exciting yes, and we have to all understand something, that if researchers can't figure out ways to regenerate hair follicles, then they're going to have an equal amount of difficulty in regenerating larger more complex organs. Do you believe that will happen? I dont, especially when I look at the work coming out of Wake Forest (WFIRM); It's more a question of time now.