Scientists fire up sonic hedgehog gene to spawn new hair regrowth possibilities

Stem cell; cell based hair therapy
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Probably the most promising news so far, but I’m sure it’ll take a lot of time till it’s out of the labs and on our scalp. Still I have a good feeling about this one. I’ll get my full head of hair when I’m 80 and die right after. :slight_smile:

This gene can revert cells to their embryonic state. Would be nice if they could revert all our cells to the age of 25.

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I think it’s been tried 20 years ago and abandoned due to cancer risks.

On the list I see Cotsarelis name. How many of Cotsarelis inventions failed or didn’t work out:

wounding + something,

PGD2 theory,

fibroblast 9,

let’s throw in something new, maybe it will work or at least we’ll secure funds (living) for five more years.

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Cotsarelis isn’t alone though, he’s working with many other researchers and he may be onto something. The problem is that breakthroughs are super slow in the medical field usually, unlike computers which advances very rapidly.

It’d be nice if they could cure baldness like they’ve cured polio and other diseases but the trouble is that there isn’t a lot of money invested there and I think most researchers are more ‘excited’ about eliminating deadly diseases.

If a cure for hair loss is going to come, it’ll probably be an accidental discovery while they’re trying to cure something more serious. So all we can really do is hope and wait like we have for 20 plus years for some of us.

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Dr. Alexey Terskikh’s discovery at Sanford Burnham Prebys came out of an accident. He was originally researching stem cells for use in neurological disorders (like Parkinson’s disease)… but found they could grow hair follicles…

https://sbpdiscovery.org/news/beaker-blog/sbps-alexey-terskikh-advances-hair-growth-research

That said, there is no one route to a solution for hair loss, it may come out of an accident, and it may come out of focused research…or maybe a combination of the two.

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Agreed-I’m open to the possibility of the solution coming from anywhere and anyone, so long as someone finally cures it. There have been numerous promising avenues of research and maybe one of them might pan out.

Great article, hopefully, this is the silver bullet we were waiting for but clearly, it’ll take another 5-10 years to do the trials, get FDA approval and finally have the product available for the masses. But it’s the best one I’ve heard about so far-assuming it’s true that he can generate an unlimited supply of hair follicles based on stem cell technology.

I think I’ll probably go with an FUE transplant in the next couple of years once I have the cash for it. At least that’s available today and luckily, I have a lot of donor hair which should give me good results-based on what’s I’ve seen with other people’s transplants. Some of these surgeries were really amazing, so I think I might get a similar outcome.

And if a cure does come out after that, I’ll use that product as well to increase the hair density but I’ll probably be in my 50s or 60s when that happens so I can’t sit around waiting while the best years of my life pass me by.