Is there any real “hope” on the relatively near horizon or is time just to say f- it and do something extreme like tattoo your head? js
[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by MPB[/postedby]
Is there any real “hope” on the relatively near horizon or is time just to say f- it and do something extreme like tattoo your head? js[/quote]
We are waiting for updates from Samumed and Histogen. They hold the most promise right now but it’s too early to say for sure if they will be the big breakthrough
that we are waiting for. We should know more in a month or two. We have to wait. And you are not alone - none of us like the waiting so it isn’t just you.
Replicel looks to be getting close, too.
We have been talking about the same companies for a long time now. I began reading posts here in 2006 and nothing has changed, same old story about waiting on this company or that or we are going to learn so much at the next world hair congress. We have heard the cure by 2010, 2015 now 2020. I honestly believe the only way this is going to be solved for us is if we do it. The process big business have to go through is to cumbersome and takes way to long and cost far to much money. However individuals have proven that being small and nimble allows you to take risks that large companies and governments can’t do, look no further then Elon Musk (tesla, space x). What it would take is organization, capital and human Guinea pigs (we have seen mice grow hair from every product ever thought up). Crowd funding is a good way to secure capital and testing can be done by independent labs. I know you are thinking there is no way we have the time or organization to do such a thing, but that is also to say that you do not care enough work for it. If that’s the boat you are in then that’s fine but I feel that we have enough motivated and intelligent people in this community to do so.
Think about the hours you have spent on this or other forums reading posts arguing with others or following the rabbit hole of links to research papers, for some maybe hundreds of hours. Now if that time was spent raising capital, testing and experimenting we may already have a cure.
Let me be clear I am as guilty as anyone in my inactivity because I thought that things looked promising that some of these companies were doing. Also I am not talking about coming up with a cure going through the government testing and bringing a product to market, it is far to expensive, I am talking about a cure for us that we can use.
Thoughts?
[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by Omar Little[/postedby]
Thoughts?[/quote]
You’re full of sh it :rotfl: elon musk :rotfl:
First of all, with respect to crowdfunding, I think it could work in support of specific projects and companies with worked-out science which are already underway, like for instance a Kickstarter to raise more money for Replicel, Sanford-Burnham, Histogen, etc. Not that these companies aren’t already doing their own significant fundraising and investor financing, but this would just be a way average hair loss sufferers could help speed up these projects.
With respect to some kind of Mahnattan Project like effort to use crowdfunding to develop a cure for hair loss from scratch, like researching and developing a whole new technology, this is utter bullsh*t. A total non-starter, as in a colossal waste of time. If I have to explain to anyone why, then it’s not even worth talking to that person.
Next point, part of the problem is that there are many companies and researchers working on this right now, and many of them are close, but may be hampered by a number of things: such as, in part, fundraising, interesting big drug and biotech investors, dealing with the FDA and foreign regulatory agencies, and having technologies that while they may be brilliant, may have some kind of built-in “glitch” which makes them not completely ready for commercialization.
A huge problem is the last thing I mentioned. And that leads me to this point: while there are a lot of companies and research teams that may be quite close to curing MPB, it would probably be much to OUR benefit if some of teamed up with each other.
For instance, Sanford-Burhnam has the problem nearly solved, but perhaps the follicles they are making are slightly undersized, maybe a bit smaller (with a narrower hair-shaft, perhaps) than normal cosmetically useful terminal hair. The pictures of the new hair follicles they released looked good, and looked like terminal hair, but they were just pictures, and maybe if you implanted those follicles into a person’s head, it wouldn’t look that great because they’re just a notch up from vellus hairs, kind of like “junior terminal follicles”. Visible to the unaided eye, but not big enough to create the cosmetic appearance of density that would really spell a “cure”.
Now it may be that the development mel just posted about scientists in China and Canada (Drs. Hu and Xing), re-seeding hair by coating Dermal Papilla cells with a “nutritious nanocoating” (in other words, putting them inside some kind of bioabsorbable sphere which also has growth augmenting properties), might be just the ingredient Sanford-Burnham actually needs to add to its technique, so the “junior terminal follicles” they’re creating from stem-cell derived inductive “DP like cells”, can produce large, terminal follicles which are cosmetically awesome. In other words, maybe Sanford-Burnham invented the computer, but what Drs. Hu and Xing have developed is the “killer app”.
But, unless these two groups – Drs. Hu and Xing, and Dr. Terskikh of Sanford-Burnham, actually collaborate and work together, we will never know.
Drs. Hu and Xing will go on using poorly-inductive cultured DP cells which are probably less than perfect for the job. And Dr. Terskikh will go on creating very inductive DP cells from iPSCs, but when the hairs actually grow they might not look that great.
Or, maybe adding Histogen’s growth factors to Sanford-Burham’s follicles is the killer app. Or maybe Histogen’s growth factors are just what Replicel needs to take it from an iffy, unreliable treatment to something with a much higher yield and better results.
But we’ll never know unless these companies and scientists actually shed the normal tendency in business to look after one’s own financial interests and avoid sharing their intellectual property with others.
They have to realize that thinking one company or lab has all the answers is unrealistic, and the best approach for everyone is COOPERATION. We’ve already seen the one-man show where one doctor thought he had MPB cured and made empty promises to that effect long after it was obvious he hadn’t – I’m talking about Dr. Gho (to use perhaps the best example out of many)…
I think the best way to start out 2016 is for all these companies and researchers to not just attend conferences where they and their “competitors” brag about their latest discoveries, but to start reaching out to each other, and signing formal agreements of cooperation and mutual assistance, where they would join forces, pool their ideas, and co-develop a really good treatment that incorporates the best ideas from several teams. When a real cure is developed through their mutual efforts, they could then share in the financial rewards.