bbc reports major stem cell breakthrough in Japan

[bigentries]

Thanks, didn't know Nigam was involved here

But it was pretty close, this one says they apparently manipulated the images

http://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nati...74K/story.html

Imagine if scientist used logic from hair loss forums. "Maybe they changed the images because they wanted to calm down the skeptics, but there's nothing wrong with that"

[bigentries]

Another interesting read

http://www.boston.com/news/science/b...9KoK/blog.html

[Thinning87]

thanks for sharing

[rbrown]

Interesting AMA related to this news.Many people are skeptic about it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comm...archer_ask_me/


One of the questions asked:


This may be a stupid question but I will ask anyway. How does stem cells effect hair regeneration for those of us who are bald. I know regenerated organs have a larger need but I'm just curious if we will see it in our lifetime.

Each of our hair follicles has stem cells associated with it. It seems those stem cells can grow new hairs if moved elsewhere. What this means is that in the future instead of people having hair transplants from the back of their head to the front, doctors may be able to simply inject hair stem cells all over your bald head and they'll grow new hairs. It's a simple idea and promising, but could take another 5-10 years to become a reality for people.

[locke999]

Thanks rbrown, it's an interesting discussion.

A followup by another poster from the same reddit page:

(I'm a postdoc in Paul's lab.)

The biggest thing standing in the way of using stem cells to regenerate hair is that in any clinical trial, the risk to the patient has to be outweighed by the potential benefit, to the patient and/or to society. For a life-threatening condition, it's much easier to satisfy that criteria than for a condition like baldness. For cell-based therapies, there are serious additional risks compared to a cream or pill or whatever, because once you give the therapy, you can't undo it -- if the patient has an adverse reaction, there's no way to go in and pick out all the cells you gave them. So overall, although I think the science is there and stem cells could be used to regenerate hair, I think it'll be a long time before we see it happen.

[HairBane]

Interesting AMA related to this news.Many people are skeptic about it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comm...archer_ask_me/


One of the questions asked:


This may be a stupid question but I will ask anyway. How does stem cells effect hair regeneration for those of us who are bald. I know regenerated organs have a larger need but I'm just curious if we will see it in our lifetime.

Each of our hair follicles has stem cells associated with it. It seems those stem cells can grow new hairs if moved elsewhere. What this means is that in the future instead of people having hair transplants from the back of their head to the front, doctors may be able to simply inject hair stem cells all over your bald head and they'll grow new hairs. It's a simple idea and promising, but could take another 5-10 years to become a reality for people.

This guy raises an interesting point:

(I'm a postdoc in Paul's lab.)
The biggest thing standing in the way of using stem cells to regenerate hair is that in any clinical trial, the risk to the patient has to be outweighed by the potential benefit, to the patient and/or to society. For a life-threatening condition, it's much easier to satisfy that criteria than for a condition like baldness. For cell-based therapies, there are serious additional risks compared to a cream or pill or whatever, because once you give the therapy, you can't undo it -- if the patient has an adverse reaction, there's no way to go in and pick out all the cells you gave them. So overall, although I think the science is there and stem cells could be used to regenerate hair, I think it'll be a long time before we see it happen.

[bigentries]

I didn't saw anyone addressing this, the paper has been proven to be fake and one of the authors want it retracted

http://www.cnn.com/2014/04/01/health...iref=allsearch

This is way skepticism should be taken more seriously
And notice how they're talking about "punishment". Real science has repercussions