How far away are we from these technologies?

[Trouse5858]

For quite some time I have this hunch that lengthening telomeres in the cells responsible for hair could in fact restore some of the damage done by DHT. Balding might really just be a hyper-accelerated cell senescence triggered by DHT.

Mice (study link ) got their hair back in original youthful quality when the telomere lengthening enzyme telomerase was reactivated in their bodies (they were engineered to have little to no telomerase production in their cells). Not an evidence it would do anything for dht affected hair but ... what if?

"If" that's the case then it will probably take around 2 or 3 years for somebody to come to that conclusion and actually pursue to to any meaningful degree. Add in another 2-3 years for hiring a team with scientific/ medical backgrounds, raising enough funds to carry out trials, R&D, refining the technique or medicine, getting FDA approval on a drug (3-5 years) and bringing it to market ( 2 years). Soo all told, that could be a real treatment in only 10-12 short years.

Not trying to be a dick. My point is simply that all these new "discoveries" about hair loss is a pretty discouraging sign. You would hope that by 2015, scientists have figured out just about everything there is to know about hair loss. How can you possibly supply a cure for something that is still widely misunderstood and unknown? Everyone on this thread is balding to some degree. It can be quite rapid for many people. For any drugs to help us in the short to intermediate term, the ball already needs to be rolling, significantly I would assume - to be able to do anything in a reasonable timeframe.

[hellouser]

For quite some time I have this hunch that lengthening telomeres in the cells responsible for hair could in fact restore some of the damage done by DHT. Balding might really just be a hyper-accelerated cell senescence triggered by DHT.

Mice (study link ) got their hair back in original youthful quality when the telomere lengthening enzyme telomerase was reactivated in their bodies (they were engineered to have little to no telomerase production in their cells). Not an evidence it would do anything for dht affected hair but ... what if?

Only way to tell is.... you guessed it, test on more mice.

[Swooping]

For quite some time I have this hunch that lengthening telomeres in the cells responsible for hair could in fact restore some of the damage done by DHT. Balding might really just be a hyper-accelerated cell senescence triggered by DHT.

Mice (study link ) got their hair back in original youthful quality when the telomere lengthening enzyme telomerase was reactivated in their bodies (they were engineered to have little to no telomerase production in their cells). Not an evidence it would do anything for dht affected hair but ... what if?

If you have hypothesized this from your own idea(s), then that is pretty damn impressive by you. The consensus seems to be heading into a altered cell cycle fate indeed by many researchers lately. Although it's not because of telomere shortening but rather an altered cell cycle fate because of oxidative stress & dna damage or a combination of both. In that sense one could argue it to be viewed as "accelerated aging" of the cells indeed. The situation is not pretty to say the least, and it's exactly why reversal of androgenetic alopecia is almost impossible to achieve. All the pipeline drugs are not going to pull it off, that's almost pretty much a fact. It would be no surprise to me that a better therapy or drug won't come from within the hairloss research field. Check for instance this link; http://www.sens.org/research/introdu...esistant-cells.

Nonetheless such a thing or a cell based cure will take many, many years. I would wish the pathology of Androgenetic Alopecia to be so superficial and easy to treat like Alopecia Areata but it's not unfortunately. It's a huge challenge.

[FearTheLoss]

If you have hypothesized this from your own idea(s), then that is pretty damn impressive by you. The consensus seems to be heading into a altered cell cycle fate indeed by many researchers lately. Although it's not because of telomere shortening but rather an altered cell cycle fate because of oxidative stress & dna damage or a combination of both. In that sense one could argue it to be viewed as "accelerated aging" of the cells indeed. The situation is not pretty to say the least, and it's exactly why reversal of androgenetic alopecia is almost impossible to achieve. All the pipeline drugs are not going to pull it off, that's almost pretty much a fact. It would be no surprise to me that a better therapy or drug won't come from within the hairloss research field. Check for instance this link; http://www.sens.org/research/introdu...esistant-cells.

Nonetheless such a thing or a cell based cure will take many, many years. I would wish the pathology of Androgenetic Alopecia to be so superficial and easy to treat like Alopecia Areata but it's not unfortunately. It's a huge challenge.

I agree. I think we may see drugs come out soon that do a better job of stopping the progression of AGA than propecia, or at least without the severe side effects. However, it's doubtful that AGA will be "reversed" using a drug anytime soon. It's just too complex to be attacked from one angle it seems.

I would bet we see major advancements in cell therapy that will be beneficial in the next 10 years. However, I personally believe the first "cure" for AGA, for most sufferers, will be in the form of perfecting donor regeneration.

[Kokles]

Although it's not because of telomere shortening but rather an altered cell cycle fate because of oxidative stress & dna damage or a combination of both. In that sense one could argue it to be viewed as "accelerated aging" of the cells indeed. The situation is not pretty to say the least, and it's exactly why reversal of androgenetic alopecia is almost impossible to achieve.

Why I think that at least some of the damage could be reversed is because cells that appear younger (it was proven that when skin cells appeared "genetically" young again when treated with telomerase in vitro) are more resilient and they are better at activating their various genes when needed (telomere fold back model could explain this). This could theoretically mean, that they could just simply overcome the damage done by DHT and function almost normally or just a bit better.

BTW there is a product on the market with a one of a kind small molecule that in human skin cells caused in vitro heightened telomerase expression - up to ~15% of the telomerase gene expression found in a type of "immortal" cancer cells. It got to the market because it could be described as a cosmetics product (similar to follicept approach).. funny

[nomorebald]

Had a couple of transplants 20 years ago and way back then one of the surgeons was talking about possible dead donor being reasearched (hair donors from those who have passed away) - after all this time it seems that it isnt going ahead. But this would have been a way to get someone elses locks.

[RobertSe]

Had a couple of transplants 20 years ago and way back then one of the surgeons was talking about possible dead donor being reasearched (hair donors from those who have passed away) - after all this time it seems that it isnt going ahead. But this would have been a way to get someone elses locks.

geez some people here seem to lose their neurons with their hair
can you explain how you could take deads hair and implant it on your scalp even if it was possible ? you ask them if they are ok with you taking their hair for the sake of your wellbeing ?
and would you be ok with hair with different textures,colors, thickness.... on your scalp ?

[nomorebald]

geez some people here seem to lose their neurons with their hair
can you explain how you could take deads hair and implant it on your scalp even if it was possible ? you ask them if they are ok with you taking their hair for the sake of your wellbeing ?
and would you be ok with hair with different textures,colors, thickness.... on your scalp ?

Geez - some people should take a chill pill- quote was exactly just from what a surgeon said 20years ago - nothing more. Turns out they were looking of a way to keep living tissue around the hair folicle (like in a hair transplant) in tact after death that could be transplanted. There were places in the world that took ones own hair plugs and kept them for transplant later for to have only a few transplanted at any given time rather than in supersessions.

The surgeon was saying that it was being researched along with, believe it of not - sibling donor. But then again all of this is the realm of science fiction as transplanting human tissue from dead donors or siblings hasnt been before.........wait a minute.......

[Swooping]

I agree. I think we may see drugs come out soon that do a better job of stopping the progression of AGA than propecia, or at least without the severe side effects. However, it's doubtful that AGA will be "reversed" using a drug anytime soon. It's just too complex to be attacked from one angle it seems.

I would bet we see major advancements in cell therapy that will be beneficial in the next 10 years. However, I personally believe the first "cure" for AGA, for most sufferers, will be in the form of perfecting donor regeneration.

Yeah. Hopefully breezula (cb-03-01)will come through and display and excellent pharmacokinetic profile with a favorable profile in side effects. I don't see bimatoprost, sm, follicept (biggest joke) beating out minoxidil, it's just not going to happen. There is a reason why in the history of medicine no single compound can grow hair as good as potassium channel openers. For setipriprant, I don't see any chance at all too. No way that the pathology of AGA is prostaglandin based imo. It's just a hypothesis nothing more. But we'll see. I do feel for the guys who have to rely on those "treatments", I really do.

To comment on the highlighted part I fully agree with you. A drug isn't going to come in and act as a cure, and even beating out minoxidil is extremely hard. Someone pointed out this dude this week;

http://s7.postimg.org/5ze4z0z2z/image.jpg
http://s4.postimg.org/u7eulyvzx/image.jpg

This guy is pretty much on castration levels and estrogen and only 4 months in, these are some extreme growth numbers. Estrogen is pretty much the only compound known to achieve (full) reversal of androgenetic alopecia, but not always. There are more of these sick pictures around of other people who are on estrogen.

When you then look at how estrogen works and acts on downstream factors it's baffling; http://press.endocrine.org/doi/full/...0/er.2006-0020.

Not only that estrogen is capable of having impact on many cell fate major regulatory pathways and the latest consensus in AGA research shows these are highly implicated in the pathology. Minoxidil is kinda the same thing, works on many levels downstream.

So that kinda makes you think, how in the hell is a drug going to act as a cure which acts on pathway(s)? It's highly unrealistic to expect this as you pointed out. I assume that if we would need to act on the pathways that really matter in the latest research it would be unsafe too.

We have preventative cure's available. A recent study of dutasteride shows that it is successful in maintaining hair in 95%+ of people in a study of 500+ people. We just need a compound with an excellent side effect profile, perhaps breezula will step in here. Prevention is where it's at.

I see donor regeneration being the most realistic thing short term too, while cell culture keeps perfecting itself. I just hope that more people like Dr. Wesley will take the initiative to innovate. The science is there, the concept is there. All it needs is tweaking and the tweaking can be done in vivo directly on humans. That is awesome imo.

[Hairismylife]

Pilofocus with regeneration plus a side free maintenance (CB) is already a cure.