Dr. Claire Higgins

[Freddie555]

who?

He works at Dr. Angela Christiano’s lab.

His resume suggests that Christiano is also in the race to grow hair from DP cells. I got my money on Nigam beating these big name researchers to the finish line.

Higgin’s resume (below) gives us some hint as to what they’re working on. But first a quote from a HT forum Higgin’s posted on :

“After isolating (dermal papilla) from human hair follicles, they grow the human DP cells in spheroid cultures in order to retain their inductive potential. Then they place the dermal papilla spheres between the epidermis and dermis of neonatal foreskin and graft it onto the back of mice. Human (hair follicle) neogenesis can be observed after 6 weeks.”

Associate Research Scientist, Department of Dermatology
Columbia University
July 2010 – Present (2 years 10 months) Greater New York City Area

Funded by a Science of Human Appearance Career Development Award from the Dermatology Foundation on the ‘Molecular Mechanisms of Hair Follicle Induction’. Combining my cell and developmental background with genomics, systems biology and bioenginnering approaches applied to the challenge of human hair follicle induction.

Postdoctoral Fellow
Columbia University
December 2007 – June 2010 (2 years 7 months) Greater New York City Area

Elucidating the molecular basis of hair follicle neogenesis. Understanding the mechanisms by which microdissected human dermal papilla cells can reprogram non-follicular epidermis to a follicular fate.

[AntiNorwood]

and some more

http://www.bernsteinmedical.com/hairtransplantblog/columbia-university-scientist-induces-hair-follicle-growth-from-dermal-papilla-implants/

[AntiNorwood]

I cant believe that one of these scientists would not try slip one of these spheres into their scalp, eyebrow or into the foreskin of their penis. surely it would cut down their research time.

[superhl]

Same old story… They can inject all the cells they want into a mouse but until they test exclusively on humans, they are pissing in the wind! I will put my money on Nigam. He’s not over regulated and doesn’t worry about being sued.

[KO1]

This is indeed correct. Claire Higgins had been working on the same type of procedure as Washenik and Christiano, and now Nigam.

http://aderansresearchinstitute.com/pdfs/PR_03_09.pdf

^They mention above that when they injected human cells into a mouse, they didn’t get anytime.

However, it’s not just about brainpower. You need major investment to drive this research and clinical trials. Maybe in India it is different as Dr Nigam can self fund.

[Freddie555]

It does not sound like you need tons of investments to do this kind of research. Not unless you have a board of CEOs & Goldman Sachs monkeys sitting around drawing big paychecks and bonuses instead of researchers spending the money on research.

But if it was as simple as aggregating & injecting DP cells and having it generate hair, would this not have been discovered long ago? Culturing & injecting cells is technology of the 1920s.

Either researchers in this field are terribly incompetent or something is missing from this puzzle.

Over the past couple of years, researchers have begun looking for trichogenic markers in DP cell populations and selecting those cells for culturing (or maybe using it to screen non-trichogenic cells out after culturing). Lets hope this leads somewhere because just injecting DP cells alone ain’t cutting it.

I’m surprised the Chinese who are masters of cloning everything from ipads to cars have not got in on the action big time.