bimatoprost

[beetee133]

Yes, unfortunately I don't think Follica has a cure yet, although their latest news release and the discovery of the FGF9/wound healing link that they described in the Nature article is very interesting and promising. I think there may have been a little confusion as their press release stated that they had achieved follicular neogenesis for the first time, but it seems that most people that have read it closely agree that this was referring to the results of an earlier (I think around 2007) wounding trial and not the results of something based on the most recent FGF9 research. So the idea is that going forward they would be using that earlier wounding system with some other kind of chemicals that they will identify as a result of the FGF9 research.

Still, good news. I think it's very likely that if a "cure" comes about it will be from Follica/Cotsarelis and this line of research, and I don't think there's another academic out there that has been working towards a cure so consistently and made so much progress. In order to get to the end point there have to be many many steps in between, and while those steps may be frustrating in comparison to the desired end goal, we're not going to get there without them.

[beetee133]

Also, this may be of interest:

"Prostaglandin E2 induces fibroblast growth factor 9 via EP3-dependent protein kinase Cdelta and Elk-1 signaling."

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16982695

So it seems there is a link between PGE2 and FGF9, which could be interesting for those following these two strands of research. Now I don't know if this relationship is sufficient to induce the kind of feedback signaling that Cotsarelis describes in his article in Nature as being necessary to instigate follicular neogenesis, but it seems to me that the main thing coming out of that article is that they need to introduce some chemical that either induces FGF9 production or mimics FGF9 (similar to how bimatoprost is a PGE2 analogue and not PGE2 itself) that they can introduce during the wounding process. They used some chemical to induce FGF9 production in mice during the studies reported in the Nature article, so either that chemical, or perhaps a PGE2 analogue. Or maybe just the PGE2 analogue could play an important role in FGF9 production without other processes.