what about Mwamba?

[joachim]

wasn't it said that mwamba will draw a conclusion this summer, about the whole donor doubling dilemma? although we know that all nigam experiments failed would still be good to have an official statement from Mwamba. maybe he tried some other stuff on his own in the meantime, so maybe he found some trick to bring this thing to work somehow. about 20% donor regeneration would be nice already. i always thought that the theory behind this doubling approach isn't that bad, and we recently found out from Dr. Gardner, that both dermal papilla AND dermal sheath cup are able to form a new follicle. so if someone is really able to cut the follicle exactly this way, then in theory it could work. at least to a certain percentage.

if someone is in contact with Mwamba would be nice to get a status update.
would also be interested what mwamba has to say about all the negative horror stories and complains against nigam. who knows if he is even still working with nigam together.

[JJJJrS]

I asked Dr. Gardner about his thoughts on the feasibility of donor doubling procedures and here is what he wrote:

It is possible to isolate parts of the follicle and re-implant them before they lose their inductivity. However this dissections is very time consuming, say 20 follicles per hour could give rise to 40 follicles. To generate the thousands of follicles required in most cases there would need to be many thousands of donor follicles, it would require a lot of man hours to isolate the follicle sections. So it would be a very long, invasive surgery and would also be extremely expensive, hence why the majority of groups are focused on taking a few follicles and expanding the cell numbers massively and then restoring inductivity.

Because in order to split the follicle correctly it needs to be micro-dissected out of its surrounding tissues which accompany the follicle even during an FUE. This takes time ~3-5 minutes depending on the skill of the person and how "clean" the follicle was when it came out. So if you scale this up by the several thousand follicles required you end up with a very large number of man hours.

Lets take a perfect scenario where every follicle comes out clean and 3,000 follicles are used.

2 x 3,000 = 6,000 minutes or 100 hours. Paying for those 100 hours of labour is where the cost comes in as it's quite a technically demanding job and several people would be required = large wage bill. That's the only issue I can see with it, having enough capable staff and paying them enough throughout the procedure as obviously it's very unlikely that this perfect example would occur in the clinic.

[FearTheLoss]

So essentially there already is a cure than

[Vox]

I asked Dr. Gardner about his thoughts on the feasibility of donor doubling procedures and here is what he wrote:

It is possible to isolate parts of the follicle and re-implant them before they lose their inductivity. However this dissections is very time consuming, say 20 follicles per hour could give rise to 40 follicles. To generate the thousands of follicles required in most cases there would need to be many thousands of donor follicles, it would require a lot of man hours to isolate the follicle sections. So it would be a very long, invasive surgery and would also be extremely expensive, hence why the majority of groups are focused on taking a few follicles and expanding the cell numbers massively and then restoring inductivity.

Perhaps I am missing something but would not it more easy to focus on automating this procedure with some kind of specialized robot? This would require zero approval for chemicals/drugs testing etc. It is only the mechanics part.

My guess is that optimizing the procedure in this way is a feat requiring the involvement of a technological giant to be solved. Apparently there is no such interest outside the hair restoration community.

[Arashi]

Perhaps I am missing something but would not it more easy to focus on automating this procedure with some kind of specialized robot? This would require zero approval for chemicals/drugs testing etc. It is only the mechanics part.

My guess is that optimizing the procedure in this way is a feat requiring the involvement of a technological giant to be solved. Apparently there is no such interest outside the hair restoration community.

Yeah been thinking the same thing, it shouldnt even be that difficult to have a robot dissect a follicle under a microscope ...

[gc83uk]

If only there was somebody on these forums who would be happy to spend 10 hours in the chair to have 200 follicles extracted and have them doubled to 400 and wouldn't mind spending maybe in excess of $10,000 per sitting.

[Boldy]

If only there was somebody on these forums who would be happy to spend 10 hours in the chair to have 200 follicles extracted and have them doubled to 400 and wouldn't mind spending maybe in excess of $10,000 per sitting.

I don't believe it would take up that much time. allot of clinics are making 3-4-5 grafts follicles into single graft follicles under a stereo microscope. , so why not horizontal cutting..

other problem such as growth angle might be an issue when implanting the bulb for example. you'd imagine that we would see some results after 2 years from nigam or others if this process was successful. I can imagine that survival rates are probably lower or to low, especially in the new recipient area (aga scalp) which makes this kind of procedure not attractive compared with normal fue. thus far have not seen patients who got full blown afro's yet with this technique.

however in theory it should be possible in the right hands.

[joachim]

i was too wondering how the bulb part (the root) can be placed into the scalp with the right direction exactly. i'm pretty sure that at least 1 of 10 inserted root parts get flipped while inserting them into the slits. thus, IF they are ever supposed to grow, there will be a lot of upside down placed roots producing ingrown hairs. there's simply no way to ensure that every placed root is angled correctly.

nigam has done a lot of damage to many customers. i wonder how long he can continue and get away with it.

[JJJJrS]

Yeah been thinking the same thing, it shouldnt even be that difficult to have a robot dissect a follicle under a microscope ...

If I had a lot of money to spare I'd invest it into something like this. Find a good research team and get them to iron out all the details for a possible hair doubling transplant procedure. For example, I'd get the team to examine how to achieve consistently high yield/survival rates, ensure proper hair growth and direction, speed up the process and reduce labour, and how to possibly increase the multiplication rate, i.e., triple instead of double.

It just seems like the next logical step too. Before we start multiplying hair follicles in a lab, which is years away, why not simply double/triple them. There's only a certain amount of hairs you'll be to transplant onto your head without causing serious complications anyway. So unless you can inject these hair cells and achieve proper, cosmetic growth, which seems like a difficult task, do we really need a multiplication rate much higher than 2x/3x?

If there's any topic worth crowdfunding, it's this one in my opinion. Pretty reasonable task with a relatively high chance of success, especially when compared to the other options. Not too mention that a procedure like that would basically print money and be a great investment.

[Vox]

So unless you can inject these hair cells and achieve proper, cosmetic growth, which seems like a difficult task, do we really need a multiplication rate much higher than 2x/3x?

Yes, we really need it for high NW's. In a NW7 you have likely 300-400 cm^2 of bare skin to cover with an anemic donor of a few thousands hairs.

But for most balding (NW3/4) people, lower multiplication rates are just fine.