Then there is also a company called Amplifica cofounded by Dr. Maksim Plikus (who led the UC Irvine investigation and publication of SCUBE3) with Dr. William Rassman, who took to reddit to report that they want to start clinical trials related to the discovery by the end of the year. Once safety trails are completed, self experimentation could happen, since it seems fairly easy to order SCUBE3 online. It is readily available today.
Yea, except that things donât always go smoothly in research so safety studies could take quite some time. Plus, SCUBE3 might need to be used longer than the length of the safety trials to cause deleterious effects so even if SCUBE3 passes safety tests it might still be harmful if used longer than the duration of the safety studies. Plus, to be on the safe side the safety studies could be multi-years long. Cell-based therapies appear to be the safest bet.
What you are saying is all hypothetical. Dr. Pilkus himself says it could take ~5years to market (the famous 5years). I personally would not mind waiting antoher 5 years if this really yields a kind of silver bullet to reactivating dormant hair follicles. I would prefer reactivating my own cells over generating new ones. Hair direction, texture and quality and all those things would appear less relevant when reactivating existing hairs.
That being said, obviously 5 years are a best case scenario which would include all Phases of the clinical trials, from safety trials to Phase II+III. So the safety protocol would likely only be a fraction of that time, maybe 1 or 2 years.
I dont see why anyone would want to use scube3 for prolonged periods of time. If anyone were to self experiment then they should follow the safety protocol which was tested and not venture beyond that.
It also seems like Amplifica is working on a signaling molecule that works like SCUBE3, but isnât identical to SCUBE3. I guess the hopeis to create a signaling molecule which selectively activates hair growth without triggering other downstream effects of SCUBE3.
The downside would be if they arenât testing SCUBE3 itself, but rather some synthetic signaling molecule, that it would be very hard to obtain until it is brought to market. SCUBE3 is available today. Some exotic lab generated substance may not be.
@roger_that i think everyone is aware that hair follicles go through cycles and that these are randomly distributed, its not like we shed all of our hair once every 12 months and then regrow
I never suggested injectin SCUBE3 selectively only for the follicles which are in a particular phase. Of course that is laughable.
Luckily in bald scalp areas usually all the hairs appear to be in prolonged dormant phases so reactivating them using SCUBE3 could potentially be helpful for 90% of those hairs, while maybe 10% are negatively affected.
Further I have yet to read that it is true that SCUBE3 actually stops hairgrowth when in a particular phase of the cycle. But I have to be honest that i didnt read the entire publication, also because it is not my field of expertise and i probably would not understand most of the details.
Are you aware if any company is indicating they will move forward with SCUBE3 for the treatment of hair loss?
Also, if Amplifica produces and tests a molecule that works like SCUBE3 but isnât actually SCUBE3 there is always a possibility that it could be acquired on the black market. Itâs not a certainty and we would have to have the ârecipeâ for the drug but it wouldnât be impossible.
But the thing about black-market drugs is that those drugs are industrial grade, which means there are impurities in the mix. Even real SCUBE3 on the legit market might be industrial grade, and if itâs industrial grade even real SCUBE3 could include impurities.
None of what Iâve said above means that Iâm not keeping an eye on SCUBE3. Iâm definitely keeping an eye on the developments with SCUBE3.
@hairman1 SCUBE3 is a ligand of TGF Beta. That means itâs a molecule that links to the TGF Beta receptor. In this video it says that TGF Beta is responsible both for hair growth and for stopping hair growth. So what I meant was that TGF Beta has both these roles, but SCUBE3 has clearly only one role, itâs an on-switch to the TGF Beta receptor.
This is interesting but we donât know if itâs safe, how to use it, the timing of using it, or the dose. Thereâs too many unanswered questions and it could take years to get those answers, and the answers could be unfavorable.
i donât think it will take years because this molecule is something your body already produces. They need to prove that it works on humans as good as on mice. Most studies donât go anywhere because they donât have any substance! Follica is a good example!
@jarjarbinx This is my take on the safety issue right now (without knowing more details): SCUBE3 is just something that people with full heads of hair have in abundance all over their scalps, and balding or bald people only have in the unaffected areas.
If you think of the average person with male pattern baldness, there are balding or bald areas of the scalp, and there are other areas which lose very little hair. It makes sense that the balding areas have too little SCUBE3, or no SCUBE3, while the unaffected areas have lots of SCUBE3, or at least as much as they need so hair can still grow. Whether youâre balding or not, you have a lot of SCUBE3 floating around in the dermis of your scalp right now, the only question is, where is it?
How can it be toxic or carcinogenic if the non-balding parts of your scalp are full of SCUBE3, and sit right next to the balding areas? Thatâs not normally how human biology works. The back and sides of a balding personâs head are full of SCUBE3, so the person is exposed to lots of it on a daily basis. Itâs only the bald areas that have none.
The ultimate reason why SCUBE3 is depleted in the balding areas is that active stem cells are depleted in the balding areas. Yes, there are a lot of links in the chain between the stem cells being activated and production of SCUBE3, but it looks like Dr Plikus has discovered that the ultimate âkeyâ - the molecule that directly switches on the TGF Beta receptors, is SCUBE3. Itâs safe everywhere else in your scalp, and itâs safe in abundance in people with full heads of hair, so why wouldnât it be safe in the balding parts of a personâs scalp?
By the way there are MANY more things SCUBE3 does, in fact if you look into it in fetal development if you have too much or too little SCUBE3 in different parts of the fetus, the fetus can develop deformities and congenital diseases, etc. But the same is true for a lot of endogenous molecules in fetal development. And with balding adults weâre not talking about a developing fetus, weâre talking about a grown person who has already developed fully.
is there any example of something being native inside the body but if you add more of it, in the form of a non-native version, it could be dangerous? Plus, even if it proves to be safe thereâs still the issue that we donât know how/when to use it.
Good question, yes actually there are quite a lot. Some neurotransmitters like serotonin, dopamine and acetylcholine. Testosterone and other androgens and naturally occurring anabolic steroids. Also, cholesterol, stomach acid, bile, etc. - all those are naturally occurring molecules and already present and necessary in the body, but if you add too much theyâll have negative effects. The part of your question about ânon-native versionsâ doesnât make much of a difference. There is no difference in the chemical structure of a lab synthesized version of any of these and the natural ones, except that there MAY be impurities along with the real chemical, as you mentioned in an earlier post.
But I donât think that adding extra SCUBE3 will be a problem. Letâs say that the hairy parts of your scalp have SCUBE3 at baseline level. The balding parts have SCUBE3 at much lower than baseline level or even at zero. If you inject SCUBE3 into the balding areas all youâre doing is bringing the levels up to a healthy baseline level equivalent to whatâs already in the hairy areas. I donât see how this would be a risk.
Of course, if you inject too much and you go WAY over the healthy baseline level, you might have problems and thatâs why I think this process probably should be monitored by a doctor. Or, we need to establish a benchmark for what is âenoughâ and what is âtoo muchâ and inject accordingly.
Thanks for your thoughts on this. It almost sounds like you have taken a more optimistic tune in your recent posts. Or am I misreading?
In my (admittedly layman) opinion, this sounds extremely exciting, if science has found the âultimate keyâ as you put it to unlocking growth in dormant hair cells? Would that constitute the âsilver bulletâ that we have been looking for?
I want to be careful not to sound too optimistic about this. I think it will still require quite a bit of safety testing. But remember how pharmaceutical companies got two agents through the FDAâs safety hoops in the 90s, Rogaine and Propecia. Both of those have multiple side effects and safety issues, but theyâre considered marginal. I suspect it will be found that any safety issues with SCUBE3 will also be determined as marginal, and SCUBE3 in my view has one additional advantage those two agents didnât have - itâs a naturally occurring substance in the body. Will that advantage make its approval a piece of cake? No, but many factors are considered and I think when you look at the whole picture, it will help.
Thereâs another issue Roger. For Hairmanâs purposes, he needs to know when/how to use it since he wants to buy industrial grade (yes, with impurities) SCUBE3 and apply it himself before itâs FDA approved to treat hair loss. I understand how he feels. He wants a cure asap. But safety studies alone wonât tell us when/how to use it. Plus, even if it passes safety testing it may become unsafe if itâs used incorrectly. Like you said, it could require monitoring by a clinician, although thatâs not a certainty yet.
I think SCUBE3 has to be used at specific & exact times in order to work. Weâve learnt this from when Cotseralis was trying different things to grow hair. It may not be like minoxidil where you can begin treatment any time. Researchers may not reveal when/how to use it until they get FDA approval to market it for hair loss, if ever.
I also think SCUBE3 might be a breakthrough but Iâm not holding my breath while I wait to find out if itâs safe and how/when to use it.
I would not say for sure if I would do self experimentation, unless the safety study shows that its absolutely safe and SCUBE3 is available in the right purity and quality. But that being said reddit and other forums are actively researching on how they could administer this stuff. If someone came up with a protocol which closely resembles what was tested in the safety trials I would probably consider. To be honest, I am not desperate enough to be the first to try it.
It is not my understanding that SCUBE3 would need to be timed with the hair follicle cycle, as it is the very signaling protein which controls the growth phases and signals the DP cells to enter into the anagen phase and begin proliferating. Adding SCUBE3 would set DP cells to angen regardless of which phase they are in (according to my understanding)
I think absolutely not, it is NOT necessary to time administering this stuff with the growth phase of the hair follicles, in any event that would be impossible (please read one of my above posts where I explain how crazy trying that would be).
On the other hand it seems to me that wherever SCUBE3 is applied, itâll turn âonâ the follicles and eventually kick them all into a steady anagen, no matter where they were before applying it.
So you might even end up with thicker hair than you ever had before, in some cases.
Is there a micro needle that has a adjustable stop? If so, then we need to determine how deep. We are missing those molecules that once flourished in the scalp area so I donât see a huge safety issue. Just need to know how far apart injections need to be applied and how deep.
Iâm very interested in SCUBE3 and Iâm paying attention to it but right now itâs looking like it could be years until we get enough info to proceed. Doesnât it seem like we might be able to get our hands on cellular therapies sooner?
Although I canât find its chemical formula or structure anywhere (Iâm still researching), we know itâs a peptide and Iâm assuming a short or medium chain peptide, with relatively low molecular weight and no super complex substituents, not an enzyme. Itâs a signaling molecule, and they tend to be fairly small to mid-size, like in the size range of insulin. That means it only has âprimary structureâ (amino acid sequence), maybe a small bit of secondary structure, but no tertiary or quaternary structure, like an enzyme would, which means it should be pretty easy to synthesize. If it had tertiary or quaternary structures they would be referring to it as an âenzymeâ, so we know itâs not an enzyme.
This tells me that itâs pretty easy and relatively cheap to synthesize and eventually some lab is going to try it, if they havenât done so already in someplace like China, and theyâll start selling it on the commercial market (as a generic chemical agent) to anyone whoâll buy it. Although it will be risky to use without safety testing, Iâm sure people are going to start buying it and using it on themselves. Those people who are using it informally will be the initial test cohort. Weâll know if itâs safe soon enough.
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