[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by alecbaldone[/postedby]
so these guys are taking hair off of one person and implanting into another? wasnt this done 15 years ago? BTW why are we not doing this instead of strip hair transplants. Seems like there are plenty of hairy people out there that would sell some follicles for a decent price. Alec[/quote]
No, I’m 99.9% sure they are NOT taking hair from one person and implanting it into another. Where does it say that? That is NOT really the central focus of the Jahoda/Christiano work.
I think what you may be thinking about is that the Jahoda/Christiano study took cells from a human and implanted them into human skin grafted onto the backs of mice. Technically and obviously, that is taking hair from one person and implanting it into another person’s skin. But I don’t think that was what the study was really trying to demonstrate. They had to do it that way because at this stage they didn’t have permission to implant the cells into the same people that they were harvested from, or into any human being, for that matter. So, even though allografting (same-person harvesting) appears to be central to their study, I think in reality, it was more peripheral and incidental. When and if Jahoda and Christiano get the go-ahead to do this on real human patients, I don’t think allografting will be a requirement. They COULD do it as allografting, but much more likely they’ll focus on autografting – cells harvested from the same patient.
The key in the Jahoda/Christiano study was not so much doing allogenic grafts, but the way the cells are cultured, using a hanging-drop method, which causes them to divide in such a way that it preserves the more primitive gene expression of highly trichogenic, just-harvested (first or zeroth generation) DP cells.
Anyone please correct me if you think I’m wrong in any of the above.
By the way, to clarify, I’m not saying allogenic grafting is bad, or doesn’t have some of its own potential advantages. I’m just saying I don’t think it was the central focus of the Jahoda/Christiano study, and I don’t think they’re doing it in the NTU Hospital study.
