A problem with AAPE

Stem cell; cell based hair therapy
1

AAPE is growth factors extracted from human adipose derived stem cells. In the body naturally, the adipose derived stem cells are secreting these growth factors to the follicles frequently whereas the AAPE treatment is injected every few weeks or every month or every few months.

When people inject AAPE they are trying to offset the loss of growth factors that are lost due to androgenetic alopecia AND naturally in the body the adipose derived stem cells were supplying the follicles with these growth factors more often than once every month or once every few weeks or once even other week. So in order to do what the body used to do before hair loss we would have to inject the AAPE more often than people have tried so far. We would have to inject the AAPE more like once a week or even twice a week.

2

aape is stupid.

/thread

3

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by needhairasap[/postedby]
aape is stupid.

/thread[/quote]

This from a clown who’s on down on bended knee trying to send $1,000 or so
to anyone in Israel who will send him a Pilox machine. LOL.

You do not know what you’re talking about. Getting AAPE to the follicles
often enough may be too problematic to be workable but AAPE is still our best
chance right now. Anything else is years away. At least we know that AAPE has
excellent science behind it and it has been shown to grow some hair in multiple
studies. Compare that to your Pilox mirage which was proved by Vraf not to work.

4

AAPE is a legitimate topic of discussion, something that people here should be interested in. I certainly am interested in it.

I just think that, as I said, it is very far from a cure and will never be anything like a cure. I agree totally with Swooping, I think it these growth factors, when added endogenously, are just something that will revive hairs already in telogen, bringing them back to anagen. At most, they will probably revive around 10-15%, maybe 20% of follicles, much like Minoxidil. Qualitatively, AAPE and Histogen are not much different from Minoxidil, perhaps a bit enhanced.

More than that, I think the FDA will not allow weekly injections, as Jarjar is always talking about. Just wait. Hear me now, believe me later. The FDA will crack down as soon as anyone tries that.

Our best and only hope for a real cure is a purely cell-based treatment, stem-cells-to-DP cells (BP) or tissue engineering (Lauster/Lindner and Tsuji).

To me, EVERYTHING else is just pie-in-the-sky bogus promises.

I don’t care what your angle is: Pilox crap, plucking crap, Wnt crap, wounding crap, topicals crap. It’s all a steaming pile of crap, and not a cure.

5

No, tell us what you really think Roger. LOL!

Roger, if I could get S & B follicles in even ONE safe country in this
entire world then I would purchase my ticket tonight and I would be
on the next flight out. But I can’t. It’s not available and won’t be
available anytime soon. It won’t be available for at least 5 years.
Maybe longer.

What you’re saying is that we should accept that we have to wait at
least 5 years for a real treatment and there’s no way around it.

Don’t you even think that they might figure out a way to regenerate
donor follicles (after harvest) in a year or two?

Argh!!!

6

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by jarjarbinx[/postedby]
No, tell us what you really think Roger. LOL!

Roger, if I could get S & B follicles in even ONE safe country in this
entire world then I would purchase my ticket tonight and I would be
on the next flight out. But I can’t. It’s not available and won’t be
available anytime soon. It won’t be available for at least 5 years.
Maybe longer.

What you’re saying is that we should accept that we have to wait at
least 5 years for a real treatment and there’s no way around it.

Don’t you even think that they might figure out a way to regenerate
donor follicles (after harvest) in a year or two?

Argh!!![/quote]

For the first time, and hopefully the last time, I agree with jarjar.

  1. SB follicles are OBVIOUSLY the holy grail (almost so obvious it isn’t worth repeating and should just be assumed we all know that).

  2. JarJar is right… in the best case scenario EVER… this will be available for purchase in 5 years… I would go so far as to say if they were even PLANNING the roll out of a successful protocol/service/method in the year 2020… even that is a best case scenario…

That said, I think SB follicles (or the like) will be available in next 10 years somewhere on planet earth.

  1. therefore, they aren’t even really worth talking about other than to discuss any new information about SB follicles, or related science…

So, I’m interested in studying stuff available in the next 2 years.

a. JarJar you are wrong about pilox… check the science man… check the people behind it… there is a good chance this is better than AAPE.

b. AAPE is “widely available” (relative to experimental baldness drugs, not to bubblegum and toilet paper)… and yet… not really any results… some, but nothing that I’m about to jump through flaming hurdles for…

c. It seems like AAPE is just another thing that “might” slow down your hairloss or 'might" regrow 100 hairs… so I just don’t find it exciting… and treatment costs what? 10,000 over 3 years (applying it at the levels you hypothesize)… so do you really want to pay 100 bucks a hair? I would pay that! if the amount didn’t top out at 100 hairs…

7

needhairasap, I have said this at least 10 times but it’s just not sinking in with some people. The reason AAPE is not growing a lot of hair is that the clinics injecting it are only injecting it once a month or even once every few months. At best they are injecting it once every few weeks. This is not often enough.

In your scalp the adipose derived stem cells are sending these growth factors to the follicles much more often than once per month. A reduction of these growth factors going from adipose derived stem cells to the follicles is the driving force behind AGA. In order to compensate for the reduction of these growth factors going to the follicles you have to replace the lost growth factors in the amounts and frequency that the adipose derived stem cells used to send to the follicles…or close to it.

Do you understand this? The problem with AAPE is that it is not being injected often enough. Do you understand yet?

8

Jarjar, you’ve discussed how AAPE is similar to Histogen’s HSC – both treatments use a variety of growth factors and proteins from basically the same or similar sources. The only big difference is that Histogen’s HSC is produced using cells under closed laboratory conditions, and AAPE is an isolate of cells taken directly from the body. There may be some small differences in the list of growth factors and their concentrations, but in sum there are more similarities than differences.

If anyone would know about the potential of these growth factors in growing hair, I’d expect it to be Histogen. After all, they’ve been studying it inside and out for the past 10 years or so. Their patent for HSC was granted on October 10, 2006, which suggests they’ve been studying this stuff for 10+ years.

So, can you tell me why, in all this time, Histogen has not studied, or not publicized any reports about doing more than 2 rounds of injections of the HSC growth factors?

In all the papers they’ve published, in all the explanations on their website and press releases and studies they’ve discussed, we never see any mention of more than 2 treatments. Maybe in some places they’ve speculated about results from a third follow-up treatment. Unlike the trials for Rogaine, Propecia, etc. which had patients using the product every day, sometimes twice a day, for years.

You’d think if Histogen had invested all this money into this technology, they’d want to show it in the best possible light, right? You’d think they’d want to show its maximum potential. After all, Histogen is looking for investor money, right? They want to build the biggest and most successful company they can, right? Maybe if they show HSC in the best possible light, in a way that will grow the maximum amount of hair, by injecting this stuff every week for a year, they’d grow TONS of hair and get HUGE investor money and would be able to launch their product much sooner and much more successfully… right?

You’d think if they want to get more investor money and be successful, they’d be all about flooding the scalp with this stuff every day on a continuous basis… right?

So, if the results really are cumulative, and you can grow a lot more hair by having HSC or AAPE injections every week, rather than twice a year, then why hasn’t anyone done this?

Why hasn’t Histogen, above all people, tried this?

9

I don’t know Roger. I did talk to the leader of the company about 4 months
and I did inform her my posit that medical science should be trying to
mimic nature, and that nature is exposing follicles to these growth factors more
often than once a month or once every few months. I explained to her that in
the wild adipose derived stem cells excrete these growth factors to follicles
on a much more frequent basis. It sounded to me like she agree with me on
that issue. I think that you agree with me too. I think everyone agrees that
I have a valid point. There is no logical argument against what I’m saying.

She didn’t say she was going to change her strategy but she agreed with me
and she listened. I could tell that she was thinking about what I was
saying.

10

Great that you talked with Dr. Naughton, but I think there’s something important that she’s not telling you. It’s obvious. Histogen is not injecting the HSC more often because they CAN’T. Most likely, it’s because the FDA won’t let them.

11

Piloscopy harvests donor follicles from under the scalp and it applies
Acell to the donor area as it harvests the follicles. The hope is that
the Acell will lead to regeneration of the harvested follicles. Are you
thinking that it will fail to regenerate donor follicles? I ask because
you’re thinking all efforts to substantially improve hair loss treatments
are going to fail until something like S & B follicles comes along, and if
Piloscopy achieves complete regeneration of harvested donor follicles I
think most people would consider that to be a substantial improvement over
existing treatments, even if it wouldn’t be as good as S & B follicles.

12

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by roger_that[/postedby]
Great that you talked with Dr. Naughton, but I think there’s something important that she’s not telling you. It’s obvious. Histogen is not injecting the HSC more often because they CAN’T. Most likely, it’s because the FDA won’t let them.[/quote]

You might be right Roger, but you might be wrong. You’re also absolutely convinced that the FDA won’t allow frequent dosing of any of these growth factors, especially Wnt mediators, to be applied topically but then how do you explain this study:

https://www.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT02275351

This drug impacts the Wnt pathway and the drug is being applied to human scalps daily at different doses and the FDA has oversight.

Maybe the only reason Histogen hasn’t initiated frequent dosing is because they figure it wouldn’t be cost-effective for the marketplace.

Don’t you love debating with me Roger? Just when you think you’ve finally crushed me I pop up somewhere else like some indestructible bionic flea.

13

I don’t see how Piloscopy helps us at all. Frankly, it scares me. It seems like just another complicated method to make hair transplants scarless, but also much more expensive. It requires an extremely high skill level by the surgeon (this is admitted by Dr. Wesley on Spencer’s radio show). That means doctors will have to get a lot of extra training to do it, so it’s likely to be much more tedious, error-prone work, and more expensive than regular HT.

Plus, I don’t even see how it increases or multiplies hair. IT DOESN’T. All it does is make HT scarless. The doctor is basically lifting up your scalp in the donor area, and using a complex tool to pull out individual hair follicles (or follicular units) from underneath the scalp. Great!!! If you listen to the interview, even Dr. Wesley keeps on saying how complicated the procedure is, how it requires great skill, how they haven’t worked out all the “problems” yet, how the procedure is still evolving, etc. Also, if you listen to Spencer’s interview with him, they talk about how Piloscopy could potentially damage the scalp… and Dr. Wesley has no real answer for this… only some very vague, beat-around-the-bush comments that they are gradually working to make the procedure better so there’s less risk this will happen. Give me a break, Jarjar!!!

And… I don’t see how it multiplies any hair. OK, let’s take your best-case scenario… they use Acell to prevent scarring and redeem the donor follicles. Still, SO WHAT? All you’re getting here is a 1:1 ratio of improvement. One donor hair used, one donor hair regenerated. All the donor follicles are surviving, but you’re not multiplying hair.

I’m not interested in that. The SB procedure doesn’t just save donor follicles… it can multiply large amounts of hair… creating as many DP cells, and as much new hair you want from stem cells.

Next…

14

Piloscopy strikes me as a whole lot of complex (and additionally invasive/risky) crap for a minimal gain.

Scalp scarring is a drawback to traditional HTs. But it usually becomes a problem because the HT procedure can’t adequately cover the head. In time the the patient comes to regret the entire HT mission and deems it a fail.

As for the donor regen with Acell, I think if it’s realistically possible on a large & consistent scale with Pilo then it should be achievable without it. We’re still waiting for clear proof of this and Acell has been around for most of a decade.

15

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by cal[/postedby]
Piloscopy strikes me as a whole lot of complex (and additionally invasive/risky) crap for a minimal gain.
[/quote]

YES!

piloscopy looks downright scary.

  1. They cut a slit in your head (not as bad as FUT but not that far away form it)

  2. They blow out your scalp like a balloon (strikes me as ridiculously scary and invasive)

  3. They snake around some weird vacume with teeth all under you scalp… totally destroying whatever the hell is down there… veins, tissue whatever.

There are many acell-like compounds coming out… I think

“graft splitting” (like gho)

the right chemical

=

2 fully recovered follicular units

16

To each their own. I’m going to reserve judgment until we have the results. I could be interested if I’m convinced that when it’s performed by a qualified surgeon it’s a certainty that it will work every time.

Modern medicine involves complicated equipment and techniques. Even when you finally get your S & B follicles (10 years from now) the process will be complex. Even if all they do at the point of treatment is inject a solution into your head through a needle and syringe they will have already done complex things using complex equipment and techniques in order to produce the that solution. And there will be things inside the solution besides the cells. There’s just no getting around involving complex techniques and equipment if you’re going to cure hair loss, or most any disease for that matter.

Like I said, I’m reserving judgment until I see the effectiveness of the treatment. If 100% of the follicles survive for ALL of the patients, no patient is left with significant cosmetic damage, no patient is left with any kind of tissue damage, and regeneration of donor follicles is 100%, then I would be very tempted to get the treatment.

And for the record I see you still haven’t responded to my post about SM04554. Here is a link to the post:

http://www.hairsite.com/hair-loss/forum_entry-id-130802-page-0-category-1-order-last_answer.html

Please respond.

17

Looks like they won’t have any results to report until October 2015.

Can’t say what I think about this, because I don’t know anything about the compound, its mechanism of action, etc.

It seems likely to me if they got the FDA to approve these trials, with daily applications, maybe this compound is thought to be harmless. There are a LOT of ways of influencing the Wnt pathway, and maybe this compound is something that does it in a more indirect, incidental or harmless way. However, if that’s true, then it’s also possible that the stuff is not really doing very much.

I guess we’ll see in October…

18

There’s complicated and then there’s complicated. With Sanford-Burnham, what they do to the cells BEFORE they put them into you might be really complicated… but once they get the cells into the syringe, all they have to do is inject. That’s a very simple medical procedure that doctors can do blindfolded.

With Piloscopy, the actual medical procedure – the invasive part during which the surgeon operates on you – is quite complicated. The doctor has to separate the under-part of your scalp from its moorings in the subdermal tissues. There’s a risk of severing blood vessels and even NERVES, as Spencer, Jotronic, and Dr. Wesley discussed during the on-air interview. Maybe you should listen to the interview, if you haven’t done so.

As for an efficacy rate, I think they’re nowhere near being able to demonstrate 100% efficacy yet. I think it’ll take a long time for them to be able to show 100% efficacy, if ever.

19

Roger, the main this is the company proposes that it’s drug candidate SM04554 may activate the Wnt pathway and the FDA allows it to be applied to bald heads daily. You said this would never happen but it’s already happening right now. The FDA is allowing a drug that they know may activate the Wnt pathway to be applied to human heads daily, and this drug is now deep in phase 2 studies so this drug is getting deep into FDA trials. The whole phase 2 trial is over in 4 months.

The FDA did not make the company prove that the drug does not activate the Wnt pathway or anything like that - indeed the company is telling the FDA that the intended action of the drug is to activate the Wnt pathway and the company told the FDA that they would be applying the drug to human heads in the study. Doesn’t this prove that you’re wrong about the FDA disallowing topical Wnt activating drugs that are frequently applied?

I understand that we have to wait until October before we have any results but I think that the mere fact that the FDA is allowing this trial to take place demonstrated that you’re wrong.

And just so you know my hopes for this drug are quite guarded because I think that they are going to have increase more than just Wnt in order to regrow hair. What about VEGF and KGF and some other growth factors? They have selected to focus on just one of the growth factors involved in hair growth and I think that is insufficient. So I doubt that this drug is going to work anyway.

Still, Wnt may be the most important hair growth factor and it may be at or near the end of the androgen/growth-factor stream that controls hair growth so the results may surprise me. In other words let’s say that in the hair growth-factor stream one growth factor leads to another and so on and so on and so on. Well, if Wnt is one of the last dominoes to fall in that stream that perhaps at that point in the stream affecting just one growth factor might have a huge positive effect. I don’t know. What do you think?

20

Some observations and ideas on SM04554:

  1. There are a TON of different drugs which are known to influence the Wnt pathway in varying degrees. Some of them have actually been approved already by the FDA for other purposes. See below:

http://cshperspectives.cshlp.org/content/4/11/a008086.full

SM04554 may have already been approved by the FDA a while ago for some other indication.

  1. I do find it interesting that I can’t find anywhere on the internet the chemical (molecular) structure of this drug, the actual chemical name, history, etc. (I’m not saying it’s not out there somewhere; it just doesn’t seem to be publicly listed in a way that can be found by searching for “SM04554”.) Which leads me to believe that Samumed is intentionally withholding the identity of the drug from the public for now. (I believe this is allowed to a certain extent – for instance, on the link you posted from clinicaltrials.gov, I don’t see any information on the chemical name or molecular structure of SM04554, which suggests it’s being hidden for now by Samumed. And I believe they have the right to do this, for everyone except the doctors and trials patients (who have signed a non-disclosure agreement). Also, on Samumed’s website, nowhere can I find the scientific name of the drug or its chemical structure.

  2. If SM04554 has already been approved by the FDA for another purpose, it could be one of many different drugs… And this might explain why they are already so “deep” into clinical trials and we never heard about Phase I trials. Maybe they didn’t have to do Phase I trials. Maybe this particular drug is already aknowledged to be safe.

  3. If this drug is already known to be safe (as in, if it’s already FDA-approved for another indication but Samumed is just not telling us that yet for business reasons), then possibly (just some wild speculation here) it has a Wnt effect, but a relatively weak effect. And if it’s a relatively weak promoter of Wnt, maybe it’s also weak at growing hair.