It looks like Stemson Therapeutics has just about cured hair loss

@superhl These are NOT the same kind of stem cells that doctors are injecting into people for various health reasons at clinics around the world. It’s more advanced than that. This is a field of medicine that is rapidly advancing, in fact this would not even have been possible maybe just 3 years ago. They are using induced pluripotent stem cells (iPS cells). Somatic cells are harvested from the blood and these are turned into iPS cells in the lab, and then the iPS cells are turned into a kind of brand new HF stem cell. Along with DP cells these develop into a follicle.

Care to speculate as to what kind of density could be achieved per treatment? If the scaffolds have to dissolve, how would that affect the time in between treatments (to increase density)?

True they are not the same type of stem cells, but they are still “stem cells”. Right? And they are developed from your own blood… Anyway, I just want to see a human growing a patch of healthy hair and NOT some mice picture! We all know they can grow hair on mice. Angela Christiano said recently in an interview growing hair on mice is easy but replicating on a human is another story. The one advantage we have is we have a president who wants these type of discoveries fast tracked. And looking at his hair, he probably has already contacted the researchers!

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i Roger, how long do you think will take to see this amazing invention on the market?

I’ve seen many different ideas over the years but this one really looks like it’ll be the cure.

Hopefully this pans out-given that he mentioned they were keeping their discovery secret, they probably have something that actually works. It also appears they solved the problem of growing the hairs in the right direction.

Since they could have tens of millions of customers potentially, hopefully they will keep the price fairly low for the treatment. Of course we’d still need to pay a hair transplant doctor to implant the new hairs. Fingers crossed that they can get it out to the public in the next few years.

A side note, some companies are working on reversing aging or to extend our lives so that’d be great if it was successful as well. If you have a good life, why wouldn’t you want to live for another few centuries and see how far humanity progresses?

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Thanks, roger_that. One more question: If they use blood from a balding person to create these follicles, doesn’t that mean that the follicles they create will be susceptible to DHT (and miniaturise again)?

Please tell me about researchers who are working on reversing aging. I’m already aware of some stuff but I would like to be made aware of anything I’m not aware of so please share your knowledge about this subject with the rest of us. Reversing the aging process could reverse hair loss so it should be cool to put that stuff in this forum and thread. Remember that when scientists reverse aging in mice the mice always recover their lost fur/hair.

It’s pretty new research and they’ve succeed in reversing the aging of mice. They’re hoping to be able to do it for humans in the future. There’s many articles on this topic that you can find on Google. They’re approaching it in different directions.

Yes that’s my thinking also, if they can reset our biological clock than perhaps we can get our hair back. Of course it could still be a long way off. What they can do in mice they can seldom do in humans who are more complex. But here’s a vid to give you an idea.

@News That’s a really good question and I’m not sure of the answer. We know they’ll be using a combination of iPS cells and DP cells. I guess the DP cells would be taken from the non-balding parts of the patient’s scalp, in the autologous procedure. In the allogenic procedure (where the iPS cell lines come from another person), if they use a person who has no MPB history, then I think it’s guaranteed that the resulting follicles would never be susceptible to DHT. But if the procedure creates iPS cells from the patient’s own blood - obviously the patient has MBP - then I’m not sure what the result would be. Would the new follicles have the characteristics of DHT sensitive follicles on the scalp, or non-DHT sensitive follicles?

I don’t know the answer to that, but one thing I can say is that in my view, that doesn’t matter too much. Let’s say they did use your own blood cells to create the iPS cells. One thing you know is that you’ll be getting brand new, made to order functioning follicles and as many as you want made (and can pay for). So if they end up being susceptible to DHT after a few years, you know you can always get more made.

One good thing about this news from Stemson Therapeutics is that it could light a fire under Team Tsuji. It wouldn’t surprise me if we saw Tsuji enter clinical trials by the end of this year or early next year instead of waiting until the middle of 2020 to start trials.

Another question I have is this: Why would the autologous procedure even be any different from the allogeneic one? Didn’t Jahoda prove that hair cells are immunoprivileged (i,e, that it wouldn’t matter whether they came from the person receiving the hair follicles are from someone else)? And if that’s the case, why would they even bother with the autologous procedure if that potentially meant that the follicles would miniaturize again?

Also, I’m wondering how well these brand new follicles will blend in with the rest if an ageing person’s hair. (It would be great if the existing hair could be “rejuvenated” - otherwise you might end up with a grey “horseshoe” and black/brown/blonde hair on top…)

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So, my take on your question is that “hair cells” (you mean “HF cells” which is a broad term that includes many different kinds of cells within the hair follicle. Note: the term “hair cells” alone in medicine refers ONLY to cells within the inner ear) are not completely immune privileged. The DP cells he took out of his follicles and put into his wife’s arm may have been immune privileged, but they’re just one kind of cell out of many. I think they don’t cause an immune reaction because they’re rapidly proliferating and relatively multipotent cells (somewhat like a stem cell but a little more specialized)… so the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) and other key immune markers on the cell membrane haven’t developed. But on other very specialized cells within the follicle, those things HAVE developed, and they can cause an immune rejection.

The proto-follicles that Tsuji, Christiano, and Stemson are creating in the lab are a mix of numerous different types of cells, and they are more mature and diverse than just DP cells. So they do have immune markers. Therefore if you try to grow something like this in a lab from Person A’s cells and try to implant it into Person B’s scalp, it would cause an immune reaction.

UNLESS, you create induced pluripotent stem cells from Person A. These cells have no immune markers, or very few, and so are immune privileged. And the other cells in the mix - DP cells - we know are already immune privileged.

So the proto-follicles or follicle germs created from those 2 types of cells would possibly be immune privileged.

I think the cells which aren’t immune privileged are the other types of cells Tsuji (and maybe Christiano?) are using, like keratinocytes or epithelial cells which they put in their mix. So a proto-follicle grown from those would cause an immune response if implanted into a different person.

Great find, btw. There have been a lot of failed predictions on this board for a couple of decades. Hope this one brings it home.

Troppo forte :smiley: horseshoe” and black/brown/blonde hair on top

@News I don’t know what color the new hairs will grow in. I don’t think we should assume they’ll have the original color of the donor, without knowing more about the procedure.

Anyway I can’t figure out why people do so much complaining about stuff like color, which is a thing you can easily fix if you wanted to, with hair dye. We’re here discussing a world changing scientific breakthrough, and people get stuck on minor problems that everyone has already able to fix for decades.

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i agree with you 100%

Stemson Therapeutics secures multi-million dollar investment from Allergan, a leading global pharmaceutical company…

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Now hopefully they will have trials in America and Asia because in Asia it can come to market fast.

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This latest discovery may be more hype than bite.