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You misinterpreted what they wrote. hESC-DP cells ARE the cells they made from IPS cells. They are the cells that matter. Now, yes, they were used on mice, and are far from knowing how to implement this cosmetically. Hopefully other research teams have come to similar conclusions and are working on all of it.
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Who knows how much they've figured out since this was published.Comment
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No. hESC stands for "Human Embryonic Stem Cells". IPS stands for "Induced Pluripotent Stem cells'. The first comes from an embryo, the seconds comes from any other type of cells, usually skin. So the first are stem cells that never have been something else. The second are cells that were developed into for example skin cells and then are being turned back into their 'original stem cell state'. However these INDUCED stem cells are still not 100% the same as their original counter parts. And that's why the DP cells that formed out of these cells, only could generate hair like fiber in 1 in 50 DP clusters.Comment
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Couldn't they increase the dp clusters? Even one 1 out 50 doesn't seem that bad when you look at how small the cells are. What I'm asking is do you know of a reason why they couldn't implant thousands upon thousands of dp clusters? Also what is your opinion on replicel? They shown impressive results at 6 months, do you think that it could be a potential cure?Comment
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Damn you're right. I reread it and was hoping you had misread it but you didn't. This kinda changes everything. No way they are going to use embryonic cells for large scale studies and cures, and the success with the IPS cells was barely more than what they have come up with DP cells from the back of the head.
I knew there was a time base, infancy related aspect to this problem. I really hope that the current researchers are paying close attention to this, and feel that it is useless to try to use adult skin and hair cells to induce hair. I wonder if there's some way to make IPS cells more like embryonic cells. It just doesn't make sense that DP cells, which have been subject to age and epigenetic changes, would be able to induce the right kind of new hair. It just seems like common sense beyond the scientific evidence that this recent paper, among others provide. Suddenly I have even less hope for hair cloning as a reality anytime soon. I really hope replicel doesn't crash and burn.Comment
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Different iPSC lines may have variable propensity to differentiate towards DP-like cells. Indeed, we had only modest success in generating DP-like cells with 1 out of 3 hiPSC lines used. The hiPSC-DP cells were not able to induce hair follicle formation when transplanted using patch method and had low frequency of incorporation into the DP of newly formed hair follicles. We speculate that this might be a result of the epigenetic memory phenomenon, known to influence IPSC differentiation [38,39,40]. The IPSC lines used for our experiments were derived from BJ fibroblasts [30]. Their mesodermal origin could cause difficulties on the first step of differentiation—induction of the ectodermal neural crest cells. Indeed, only some hIPSC-NC cells expressed neuroepithelial markers Sox2 and Sox9 (S4 Fig.). However, a global comparison of multiple hiPCS and hESC lines suggested that when sufficiently large numbers of hiPSC lines were compared with hESC lines a major overlap in their differentiation potential was observe [41]. Therefore although the absolute efficiency may vary between different hESC and hiPSC lines it should be possible to derive cells with hair-inducing properties from many hiPSC [42].Comment
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there's one important question when talking about the lower efficiency with iPS cells:
when these DP cells are created from iPS cells, at which timepoint can we identify if they are good or not? is it done in the dish under a microscope? or do we only see their potential after they are injected into the skin?
because even if the efficiency is only one 50th compared to hESC and therefore many iPS lines/clusters have to be discarded, its still possible to multiply just 50 times more of them to reach the same amount of cells. but is there a way to automatically sort them out prior to injecting them into the skin? if so, then i don't see a problem at all.
however, i also think regarding hair growth angle the best way would be to have an artifical skin model where those iPS are injected to form the follicle in the first place. then, when the hair reached 2 or 3 mm in length, it could be implanted into the human skin with normal FUE methods. this would have several advantages.
1. we would be able to only implant healthy grown follicles. we could even check every single follicle under microscope and with other screening methods to be sure there are no cancer-like cells formed. this would take out the cancer-risk factor of the whole game, making it a very safe treatment.
2. growth angle is no issue. once the hair has a length of a few milimeters, an FUE surgeon is able to place the follicle correctly.
regarding artificial skin: we heard a lot of news in the last couple of months where companies are creating 3D printed skin. i believe that one of those technologies could serve as a temporary growth medium for the follicles, for let's say a few weeks. during these weeks the skin and follicles have to be provided with oxygen, nutrients etc. to keep the growth environment alive. however, i could also imagine that the iPS derived DP cells can be clustered in a dish without such an artifical skin environment. once the follicle has formed, it has to be quickly implanted within a few days in order to stay alive.
of course, we're not discussing price issues here. yes, it will be expensive if it ever comes out, but costs will come down as soon as those culturing processes get more common and automatised.
all in all, iPS cells are promising and could definitely be the cure despite their lower efficiency compared to the embryonic stem cells.
it would be nice if we could reach out to the researchers to ask them about the iPS culturing issues, especially if the not successful cells can be sorted out prior implanting into the skin. if so, i don't see the lower effiency as a problem at all.Comment
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by the way:
a similar breakthrough with brain cells also happened recently:
like with the DP cells, the brain cells were tried to be derived from both embryonic and iPS cells, with similar results. iPS cells showed lower efficiency compared to the embryonic cells.
stem cell research is really advancing rapidly these days. we almost here about another stem cell experiment and breakthrough every week. all those non-hairloss related stem cell research, also with iPS cells, will help with the hairloss topics, too. once they figure out how to use iPS cells efficiently and do cell transformations into any kind of cells at will, then i think the hairloss research will profit very much from it.
if replicel and lauster fail or lead to moderate results only, i think stem cells (iPS) are the only way left to create de-novo hairs.
indeed, i think it's the ONLY way to a full cure. it's only a question of time until we hear that dr. lauster wasn't successful because of DP culturing problems or whatelse.Comment
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also, what i don't understand:
those russian research team was only talking about DP cells derived from iPS but why is nobody talking about epithelial cells which are often said to be very important to team up with DP cells for creating a follicle. if you remember, Dr. Xu achieved this breakthrough, creating epithelial cells from iPS but he mentioned the second important cell type for forming a follicle, the DP cells creation from iPS is still not figured out.
so could this also be a reason why effiency or inductive capability was not as desired?
what is the connection to the epithelial cells? did they even think about epithelial cells or did they just inject the DP cells into the skin? this is all very confusing because we already heard that DP cells alone are capable to trigger hair follicle formation. (as well as DSC cells according to replicel). so it seems that those cells are all capable of inducing follicles on their own, but some researchers insist that there has to be communication between different cell types, so they have to be combined.
we really need to reach out to Dr. Xu to get his opinion on it. don't you agree? sdsurfin, are you still in contact with him or is the connection broken?Comment
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