Expected to be a lower cost alternative to Dr Tsuji, too …
Of course the issue is - has this man solved the hair-inductivity problem? If he hasn’t then he is destined to fail.
That’s two medical groups in Japan working on multiplication, this group and Dr. Tsuji. It’s a good sign that there are many different competitors trying to achieve the same thing.
And there’s also Replicel-Shiseido.
First of all you need some peripheral information. These cell-based hair therapies = the surgeon removing some follicles from the donor area in the back of the heard, harvesting the cells from the follicles, and culturing the cells to make many many copies of the cells, which are then injected back into the head to produce new hair-growing follicles.
That aside, the identity of these cells prompt them to grow follicles for hair growth. But for some reason after culturing the cells they revert to cells with skin identity instead of hair identity. Hence, the surgeon can’t get them to produce hairs. The trick is to find a way to culture the cells while retaining their hair identity. This is called hair INDUCTIVITY.
I hope this helps.
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Yes, hair inductivity is the ability of dissociated cells to generate or induce the growth of hair follicles. The term mainly applies to DP cells, and in practical terms, mainly applies to when they’re being cultured in vitro (in lab conditions) and injected in dissociated form (liquid cell suspension) into the skin.
Since the failures of earlier researchers and companies like Intercytex, Aderans, etc. who were mainly using the model of injecting cultured but dissociated cells into the scalp - in a cell suspension - many researchers have moved on from that model and aren’t doing that anymore. (I think the one major exception is Replicel who I believe as of now are still using the “culture and injection” model).
The new model is where cells are removed from follicles and put back together to generate new follicles (sometimes called follicle germs, protofollicles or other terms) in the lab, before these new follicles are implanted (not injected) into the skin. The implantation of these “baby follicles” is not a process of injecting free-floating cells, but more like regular hair transplantation. That is because the follicles are already formed before they’re being put into the skin.
Also the new model uses mainly stem cells and other kinds of epithelial cells, rather than focusing on just DP cells. And, to actually get the follicles to form in the lab, the stem cells and epithelial cells have to be positioned together in a very specific way (that’s why some researchers are talking about automation - the automation is mainly about adding the different cells together than about implanting the new follilcles into the scalp. I suppose some will use automation to implant the follicles in the scalp as well, but when they say ‘automation’ they’re mainly referring to the laboratory process of adding the cells together).
The benefit of this method of growing new follicles outside of the body is that you don’t have to worry so much about “inductivity”. Yes, I guess it’s still important to have cells with that capacity, but since you’re using stem cells and epithelial cells, the induction takes place at that point - when you add the two together. It happens outside of the body, not inside the body, so lots of tricky variables are avoided. When you add the two types of cells together in the right conditions, either they form a follicle or they don’t. There’s no guess work. Most of the time, according to Stemson, they form follicles because that’s the natural thing to do when you add the 2 types of cells together under those controlled laboratory conditions. So there’s no wondering, “are the cells inductive or not?” You see the results almost immediately (or within a few days of combining the cells) and the doctors have control over 100% of the process. It’s “what you see is what you get” because if you combine the cells and they don’t form a follicle, you know you’ve done something wrong. You will only implant follicles that actually have grown, so your success rate of getting hair to grow should be around 100%.
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It’s my understanding that the TissUse method also involves injecting cells into the skin instead of hair follicle germs. Now, Follicle Thought (a hair loss website) started saying in 2019 that J Hewitt was going to do a human study involving the TissUse method/technology but just before they actually did it Follicle Thought then reported the J. Hewitt couldn’t find a lab to do the experiment. Their reason for this problem sounds somewhat contrived though and I’ve been thinking that the whole story was some kind of publicity stunt so I emailed TissUse and they did confirm that they have indeed turned their technology over to J. Hewitt to take their tech to human trials. That having been said, it does seem odd to me that TissUse is sticking with J. Hewitt even though he can’t pull the trigger. I really don’t know what to think of this situation.
I think Dr Lauster’s (TissUse) technique involves creating tiny microfollicles and then injecting them, so it seems to be a combination of both methods. Here’s a video that explains it. It says they were supposed to be starting human clinical trials in 2019, no idea if they actually did. It sounds like they didn’t according to @jarjarbinx I’ve heard the delay was because of COVID-19. Which is strange because this pandemic didn’t really start until like Dec 2019.
2023 !!! 
These days I can’t even plan more than 2 weeks ahead, don’t be surprised this gets pushed back to 2024 or later.
If you visit the university’s website, there is no mention of the 2023 trial at all, the last time they talked about this was in Jul 2019.