Roger_that, why can\'t they simply do what Jahoda already did?

Stem cell; cell based hair therapy
1

Check out the story in this link:

http://www.menshealth.com/spotlight/hair/banish-baldness2.php

Here in italics is the key excerpt from the article:

The eureka moment for Colin Jahoda, M.D., Ph.D., and Amanda Reynolds, Ph.D.—a husband-and-wife team of biologists at the University of Durham, in England—involved an experiment that also served as a nerdy version of a “Colin Forever” tattoo. Dr. Jahoda removed a hair follicle from his head, put it under a microscope, and snipped off a cluster of dermal papilla cells, which are located in a bulb at the root of the shaft. He then nicked his wife’s forearm with a scalpel and transplanted the cells. A few days later, a thick tuft of dark hair (complete with Dr. Jahoda’s male DNA) emerged.

The experiment demonstrated, for the first time, the possibility of growing hair from transplanted dermal papilla cells. It seemed the two had found a new treatment for hair loss. Yet they soon discovered that, once removed from the body, dermal papilla cells quickly lose their ability to make hair if they are not transplanted immediately.

Angela Christiano, Ph.D., a professor of dermatology and genetics and development at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, collaborates closely with Dr. Jahoda on hair-related research. “Not long after you remove them, the cells don’t even know they’re dermal papillae anymore,” Christiano says, who is sitting in her office behind a desk piled two feet high with books and papers. “It’s like taking an Etch-a-Sketch and shaking it,” she says. “You erase their identity.”

The Jahoda-Reynolds experiment worked because a clump of hair follicle cells were promptly relocated, which preserved their inductivity, a measure of their capacity to remain uniquely hair cells before devolving into something more generic. While I’m in her office, Christiano calls England and puts Dr. Jahoda on speakerphone. “These cells seem to have an in-built regulatory system,” he explains. “We don’t know how it works. Getting the cells to remain inductive is still the basic challenge.”

What’s wrong with the idea of having a person in an operating room, rapidly harvesting half of the follicles from the person’s donor area, rapidly collecting the dermal papilla cells from the harvested follicles and then putting those dermal papilla cells into the person’s thinning areas right away. Since you have only done this with half of the person’s donor area the person would still have enough donor area to look normal.

You could perhaps use techniques that allow full regenration of the harvested tissue and then the person might end up getting back his entire donor area anyway.

Or you could do this by paying another person who would give you half of his/her donor area follicles and the doctor could extract the dermal papilla cells from the follicles the doctor got from the other person and then the doctor would inject those dermal papilla cells into your thinning areas which would then thicken your thinning areas. Theoretically you could do this multiple times.

Whether you used half of the follicles in your own donor area or paid someone else for half of his/her follicles in his/her donor are this would eliminate the need for culturing the cells after you harvest the follicles from yours or someone else’s donor area. You simply take the cells out of the follicles and immediately put them into the thinning areas of the scalp of the person who is losing his/her hair.

Would this work? It seems like this would solve the problem of the cells losing their identity since they have been outside of the body too long.

I think that most likely you would have to use your own follicles and then hope you can regenerate your donor area because even though there are a lot of people asking why we don’t want to give up our hair those same people would not be willing to risk half of their own donor area hair so you would not find other people who would sell you half of their donor area at a reasonable price.

2

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by jarjarbinx[/postedby]

Whether you used half of the follicles in your own donor area or paid someone else for half of his/her follicles in his/her donor are this would eliminate the need for culturing the cells after you harvest the follicles from yours or someone else’s donor area. You simply take the cells out of the follicles and immediately put them into the thinning areas of the scalp of the person who is losing his/her hair.

Would this work? It seems like this would solve the problem of the cells losing their identity since they have been outside of the body too long.

I think that most likely you would have to use your own follicles and then hope you can regenerate your donor area because even though there are a lot of people asking why we don’t want to give up our hair those same people would not be willing to risk half of their own donor area hair so you would not find other people who would sell you half of their donor area at a reasonable price.[/quote]

You can’t accept transplanted cells from someone else without yourself taking immunosuppressant drugs. Unless it’s for life threatening reasons (heart transplant etc.) - this is a bad idea.

3

Don’t have time to give a full answer right now, but I think basically the idea you described is very similar in concept to Dr. Gho’s “Hair Stemcell Transplantation” (HST), although Gho emphasizes (for marketing purposes, I would argue) that when he divides the follicles, he’s splitting the stem cells between the two divided halves. In other words, he puts the emphasis on “stem cells” rather than on “DP cells”. This name “HST” is not entirely scientific though, because we don’t really know what the actual role of stem cells or stem cell regulation is in generating hair follicles. It appears progenitor cells have a more direct, immediate role. Stem cells have a role, but only insofar as they generate progenitor cells. Stem cells are found in normal numbers in balding men’s scalps, including in the bald areas – per Cotsarelis. (Sorry for that digression about stem cells.)

Anyway, I think the logistical problem in doing what you describe, i.e., in reproducing Jahoda’s first experiment with his wife, Dr. Reynolds, is that when you harvest a follicle in that way, you are also “using up” that follicle.

For every follicle you use up that way, that’s one less follicle you can use to cover bald scalp, so essentially you’re just moving follicles or DP cells around the head.

Few people would have the skill to really divide follicles, and their DP cells, in two, and make full use of both halves. Gho CLAIMS to have the skill to do this, but what real evidence have we seen?

I think it’s very dicey, and at best, a very impractical way to generate “new” hair.

As far as Jahoda, he didn’t, from what I know, spend much time thinking about how to create two follicles from one, which would help restore hair on balding men’s heads. He was just proving a principle about DP cells’ trichogenicity.

In any event, the principle he proved is far from perfect, because we know after so many different experiments and clinical trials by researchers like ARI, that trying to generate follicles or regenerate follicles just by moving DP cells around seems to have limited usefulness. DP cells are trichogenic, but by themselves are not trichogenic ENOUGH to generate large amounts of “new” hair. (I’m actually paraphrasing what you recently said about some of Dr. Nigam’s work – it grows hair but not ENOUGH hair.)

Anyway, I would hesitate to go back to a Jahoda experiment of many years ago, like this one, to come up with new practical ideas. If some really practial, revolutionary application that has potential to grow a lot of hair could have been developed from this, I think it would have been done already.

ARI, Intercytex, and many others have tried. They’ve already gone the DP cell route. They all essentially failed.

4

Yes, that’s a big concern, too. That would be an allogenic hair transplant, or an allogenic cell transplant.

Although remember, Dr. Jahoda’s wife did not reject the implant of cells from Dr. Jahoda. There is reason to belive that DP cells (and possibly some other follicular cells) aren’t antigenic enough to generate a full-blown immune reaction in a different host.

However, that principle would have to be tested, and it would take a long, long time to go through clinical trials and the FDA approval process. It would be a monumental effort to prove it’s safe and get that idea to market because of the immune questions.

5

This part of what you describe, I think, is good and accurate, although to create a logistically workable procedure from this where recipient area is regenerated and donor area is saved, I believe, would be too difficult and impractical.

What you’re describing, again, is very similar to what Gho is doing, although you’re emphasizing DP cells and Gho emphasizes “stem cells”. (He might as well be emphasizing DP cells, but he stresses “stem cells” in the name “HST”, I believe for marketing reasons).

6

Didn’t Jahoda prove already that these types of cells are immuno-privileged?

[quote]

[postedby]Originally Posted by walrus[/postedby]

You can’t accept transplanted cells from someone else without yourself taking immunosuppressant drugs. Unless it’s for life threatening reasons (heart transplant etc.) - this is a bad idea.[/quote]

7

I don’t know that he proved it beyond all doubt, but his experiment with Dr. Reynolds did demonstrate it in principle.

8

Dr. Reynolds is a woman and Jahoda’s a man. Doesn’t this mean that their genetics are wildly different? I’m not saying that Jahoda proved this tissue is immune privileged with certainty but it does seem like a strong/likely probability. It begs further exploration if you ask me.

If the tissue is immune privileged then couldn’t this be done right now if other people would sell perhaps 50% of their donor region for some cash? I don’t think a lot of other people would sell half of their donor hair region but I do think that some would and if it worked that would eliminate the need for culturing the cells and that solve the problem of the loss of induction among the cells, right? And then scientists wouldn’t have to figure out a way to keep the cells from losing their induction and we would already have a cure this very moment, right?

9

Roger_that these are just a tiny sampling of the studies which indicate that hair follicle cells are immune privileged and some of these studies go back to the early 1990s. It looks to me like this is a long known fact that researchers maybe have not been paying enough attention to. It looks to me like hair loss may already be cured and it may have been cured since the early 1990s when researchers first began to realize that it’s pretty certain that these cells enjoy immune privilege. It seems to me that this fact has been out there for over a decade ago and we bald people should have been given the option of finding people who would donor half of their hair donor region in exchange for some cash so that their hair cells could be used as donor tissue to restore bald people’s hair. This could have been going on for over a decade but the idea has been completely ignored for no proper reason.

There are people who would be happy to donate the tissue in exchange for some cash. I read where people are selling out the back of their heads to marketers who want to advertise their products. Some people don’t care if they have hair or not and they would rather have say $10,000 then have hair so they agree to keep their head shaved and they advertise products on the back of their head for manufacturers. I’m sure you could find an endless supply of men who would sell you half of their donor hair tissue for $10,000…maybe even $5,000. Some people place very little value on hair. Most people do not place as much value on their hair as we here do. Before my brother died he offered to sell me his hair donor region for $2,500.

10

That’s gonna produce some amusing surprises when the donor hair turns out to be the wrong color, curl, thickness, etc. Or when it starts to turn gray at a much different rate than the native hair.

Jahoda proved that if you wreck one follicle then you can use its guts to regenerate another one somewhere else. Gho has proved that if you split the wrecked follicle then you might get a little more than you started with, but not much.

Seriously, organ transplants from person to person are too big a deal to use for MPB. That’s what any reputable govt agency is gonna say. Forget about it.

11

I think that I read somewhere that evidence indicates that the hairs took on some key characteristics of the the recipient area hairs but not all.

12

They say that goes on with body hair transplanted to the scalp. The BHTs seem to find a medium point about halfway between their original traits and the scalp hair.

It’s curious (and beneficial) that this “hybridization” process happens to the hair characteristics but the MPB resistance does not change like that. People sometimes complain about HT hair thinning, but the overwhelming majority of cases suggest that transplanted hair normally doesn’t age any worse than it would have in its original location.

13

So this means that there is a very real possibility they could have given all of us a full head of real live growing hair over a decade ago but they haven’t done it because they are trying to figure out a way to take donor hair from another person out of the equation. They have maybe wasted more than a decade.

14

Do you really think person-to-person transplants, with the differences in hair characteristics, and the costs of sourcing donor hair, and the overall issue of govt approval, would be a practical and widely employed solution? Are you kidding?

Just transplanting our own hair is already expensive right now.

15

It seems to me that it would be less expensive to transplant donor cells from one person to another than transplanting entire follicles from one spot on a person’s head to a different spot on the same person’s head. And Jahoda proved over a decade ago that it would work.

It looks like they are putting all of this time into it (over a decade) to try to keep from involving a different person for the donor tissue even though there is a good possibility that the tissue is immune privileged anyway. Every day we wait further may be unnecessary. There are definitely people who would sell you some of their donor area tissue.

16

Roger,freddie,boldy,arashi,jarjar,and others,

Let’s post some scientific questions, to respecetd jahoda…at the ishrs meeting at San Fransisco ,he will be there probably only for one day i.e 25th october.

I already have my list of questions and suggestions.
His major work is with dermal papilla,dermal cup sheath cells to grow new hair.
Would also like to correct that it was not with dermal papilla cells ,but with dermal cup sheath cells…that he grew new hair on his wife’s arm.
Hanging drop is an old method now to culture 3d spheroids.

I would like to discuss with him on these lines…

  1. Human hair follicle neogenesis using microenvironmentally reprogrammed dermal papilla cells.

2)Involvement of the immune response in regeneration of experimentally amputated whisker follicles in vivo.

3)Various scaffolds and their potential to develop trichogenic dermal papilla

  1. Perfecting the repair of a bisected hair follicle invivo (interesting for doubling lovers),perfecting the regeneration of denovo follicle regen at the donor.

5)His experience with SHH to activate dp cell culture in vitro or dormant follicles in vivo.

6)His experience with intradermal injections of, freshly isolated dp/dcs cells(alone or in combination with other factors,cells) and the potential for hair regrowth and or activation of dormant follicles.

7)Scalable production of controllable dp spheroids on PVA surface…effect of spheroid size on efficiency and efficacy of hair follicle regen.

8)optimized prep of dermal culture methods (like,organ germ,Hemi vascularized sandwitch method,special media and factors,any improvement in environment of culture), to improve dp culture trichogenicity.

9)How to overcome he problem of low oxygenation and lack of nutrient(if it is so) at the centre of spheroids,what is his opinion on mass production of spheroids in polysterene coated tubes with low cell adherence.

9)Progenitor epithelial stemcells…and mesenchymal dermal papilla,dermal cup sheath cells…what will he prefer…
culturing separately and injecting or co culturing…
what role does he see for growth factors and SHH for activation of dormant follicle in vivo…and for keeping the cultured cells trichogenic for longer passages.

  1. His opinion on…microfollicle created in vitro v/s trichogenic dermal papilla in spheroids with active secretion of ECM…which one have better potential to create new hair follicle on human scalp.

11)Potential of allogenic donor… hair transplantation with… follicles,after washing off all the blood tissue,and making sure they are completely immuneprivileged.

Would love to read more questions …posted by the members for jahoda…!

17

He is most recently been working on finding a way to protect conductivity. I would ask him what is the most cutting edge method(s) for solving the problem of conductivity? In a recent article Professor Jahoda and his colleagues said some interesting things. Here in the below article is a key excerpt:

A researcher named Claire Higgins informs us she has just received a fresh dime-size chunk of live scalp donated by a male hair-transplant patient. We join her in a lab, where she is hunched over a steel table, staring into a microscope. With forceps and a long needle, she scrapes dermal papillae from each follicle.

I look through the eyepiece. She tells me I’m viewing roughly 3,000 dermal papillae packed into a ball of cells just a fraction of a millimeter wide. They resemble golden tobiko, the flying-fish roe dolloped onto sushi rolls. These cells will end up in an incubator, where they’ll be cultured for at least 4 weeks and then transplanted into mice to see if they’ll produce hair.

Several factors determine whether this happens. One is the growth medium, the soupy broth fed to the cells to help them thrive. Another is how quickly the cells multiply: As Dr. Jahoda and Reynolds showed, the less time cells spend outside the body, the better they retain their inductivity. A third factor is how the cells are transplanted. Do you inject them? Or position them surgically under the skin?

“We’re trying to get into the heads of the dermal papillae and understand why they lose their inductivity,” Christiano says. “Then we’ll do the reverse: Take old cells that have been in culture for many months and bring them back into the fold, coaxing them to grow hair.”

I ask Christiano how she and Dr. Jahoda intend to accomplish this. She smiles, clearly not wanting to tip her hand, and replies, “We have a few ideas. I will say that if we figure it out, a lot of hair-loss sufferers will be very, very happy.” Their research could also inform next-generation baldness cures, genetic fixes that reprogram the cells, much like a software patch, and override the genes responsible for androgenetic alopecia. hods that we could do this now.

In this article excerpt above, in italics, please note what Professor Jahoda’s research collaborator, Dr. Christiano, said regarding protecting conductivity for longer periods of time. She said, “We have a few ideas. I will say that if we figure it out, a lot of hair-loss sufferers will be very, very happy.”

She’s right! A lot of us are waiting and some of us have been waiting for years. Since they have some ideas I’m sure they have been testing those ideas the past months and will they please give us the most up-to-date, cutting-edge information how this can be done since it appears that this is the Holy Grail of information. It seems to me that the solution is to trick the cells into thinking that they are still in the body and it seems to me that research is emerging how to do precisely that. For example, there is this study among others:

http://med.stanford.edu/ism/2010/july/muscle-stem.html

My question is will they please tell us how to solve the problem of conductivity??? Since they have had some ideas for awhile they probably know what ideas are showing some results. Ask them to please give this information.

18

If they will share with us any information that might help eliminate the obstacles to making cell treatments work to produce a good amount of hair. I already ask if they will disclose way(s) we can solve the problem of conductivity but also if they can thinking of anything that would help you (Dr. Nigam) overcome the obstacles would they please share that information with you.

19

One last thing I would say to you Dr. Nigam is now that I am looking over what he is doing and what he has been doing I think that it’s clear that Professor Jahoda is probably ahead of everyone else when it comes to a cure for hair loss. He has way more potential to grow a lot of hair on people’s heads than Aderans, Histogen, or Replicel. They have all taken their technologies as far as they will go and their results are limited. Of course repeat treatments could change all of that for Aderans and Histogen but when it comes to single treatment dates they have very limited success. Fpllica also looks to be stuck as far as its’ “wounding” treatment goes.

On the other hand, Jahoda is working hard on solving the problem of conductivity and if he’s finding success then that could be a turning point in the battle against baldness. Look at all the success that’s being had with injecting cells into rodents but not so much with humans. Conductivity is certainly a big obstacle because of course if cells lose their memory of what they’re supposed to do they can’t be expected to do what is expected of them to do. If the problem of conductivity can be solved it could be a game-changer.

We balding people need the problem solved. The problem has been going on forever. We need to get this done. It’s ruining people’s lives and people only get one life.

20

Dr Nigams, interesting questions, you know better than anyone what you need for your research. But in return, and I’m sure you’re planning on that already, I’d try to figure out how you can support him and what you can do for him in return. He’s the man in the lab, you’re the man with access to the field. Seems like a good combo to me !