hasn’t there been enough information posted here already to disprove it?
it certainly seems so.
yet some people continue writing letters and raising false alarms…
what information disproves it?
It sure as hell aids in regrowing local tissue, It just may not regrow hair.
You can’t officially say it doesn’t work if it hasn’t yet been tested for hair loss.
At the very least there is a hugely likely chance that it will aid in scar repair and still a slight chance that it may regrow hair.
Here is an interesting article about Acell, the first part is about Spievack’s finger but I will post the good part:
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Archive/Soc/soc.senior.issues/2008-03/msg00559.html
"Advances That Go Beyond Theory
In his lab at Wake Forest University, a lab he calls a medical factory, Dr. Anthony Atala is growing body parts.
Atala and his team have built, from the cell level up, 18 different types of tissue so far, including muscle tissue, whole organs and the pulsing heart valve of a sheep.
“And is it growing?” Andrews asked.
“Absolutely,” Atala said, showing him, “All this white material is new tissue.”
“When people ask me ‘what do you do,’ we grow tissues and organs,” he said. “We are making body parts that we can implant right back into patients.”
Dr. Atala, one of the pioneers of regeneration, believes every type of tissue already has cells ready to regenerate if only researchers can prod them into action. Sometimes that prodding can look like science fiction.
Emerging from an everyday ink jet printer is the heart of a mouse. Mouse heart cells go into the ink cartridge and are then sprayed down in a heart shaped pattern layer by layer.
Dr. Atala believes it’s a matter of time before someone grows a human heart.
“The cells have all the genetic information necessary to make new tissue,” Atala explained. “That’s what they are programmed to do. So your heart cells are programmed to make more heart tissue, your bladder cells are programmed to make more bladder cells.”
Atala’s work with human bladder cells has pushed regenerative medicine to a transformational breakthrough.
In this clinical trial at Thomas Jefferson Hospital in Philadelphia, Dr. Patrick Shenot is performing a bladder transplant with an organ built with this patient’s own cells. In a process developed by Dr. Atala, the patient’s cells were grown in a lab, and then seeded on a biodegradable bladder-shaped scaffold.
Eight weeks later, with the scaffold now infused with millions of regrown cells, it is transplanted into the patient. When the scaffold dissolves, Dr. Shenot says what’s left will be a new, functioning organ.
“The cells will differentiate into the two major cells in the bladder wall, the muscle cells and the lining cells,” he explained. “It’s very much the future, but it’s today. We are doing this today.”
Repairing The Wounded
Today, one of the biggest believers in regeneration is the United States military, which is especially interested in the matrix that regrew Lee Spievack’s finger.
The Army, working in conjunction with the University of Pittsburgh, is about to use that matrix on the amputated fingers of soldiers home from the war.
Dr. Steven Wolf, at the Army Institute of Surgical Research, says the military has invested millions of dollars in regenerative research, hoping to re-grow limbs, lost muscle, even burned skin.
“And it’s hard to ignore this guys missing half his skin, this guy’s missing his leg,” Wolf said. “You start asking the question, is there somebody out there with the technology that can do this for us?”
“You mean regrow the tissue?” Andrews asked.
“The answer,” Wolf said, “is maybe.”
At the burn unit at the Brooke Army Medical center, the very idea of regeneration brings a glimmer of hope.
Army Staff Sgt. Robert Henline was the only survivor of an IED attack on his Humvee north of Baghdad.
“It’s a great idea,” Henline said, talking with Andrews about the military’s investment into the new technology. “If they can come up with something that’s less painful and can heal it with natural growth, without all this scarring, it’s definitely something to check into.”
Regeneration Race Goes Global
Several different technologies for harnessing regeneration are now in clinical trials around the world. One machine, being tested in Germany, sprays a burn patient’s own cells onto a burn, signaling the skin to re-grow.
Badylak is about to implant matrix material - shaped like an esophagus - into patients with throat cancer.
“We fully expect that this material will cause the body to re-form normal esophageal tissue,” Badylak said.
And in a clinical trial at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, patient Mary Beth Babo is getting her own adult stem cells injected into her heart, in hopes of growing new arteries. Her surgeon is Dr. Joon Lee.
“It’s what we consider the Holy Grail of our field for coronary heart disease,” Lee said.
The Holy Grail, because if stem cells can re-grow arteries, there’s less need for surgery.
“It’s a big difference from open heart surgery to this,” said Babo. “If people don’t have to go through that, this would be the way to go … if it works.”
The Business Of Regeneration
Corporate America, meanwhile, already believes regeneration will work. Investment capital has been pouring in to commercialize and mass produce custom-made body parts.
The Tengion Company has bought the license, built the factory, and is already making those bladders developed at Wake Forest that we told you about earlier.
“We’re actually building a very real business around a very real and compelling patient need,” said Dr. Steven Nichtberger, Tengion’s CEO.
Tengion believes regeneration will soon revolutionize transplant medicine. Transplant patients, instead of waiting years for a donated organ, will ship cells off to a lab and wait a few weeks to have their own re-grown.
“I look at the patients who are on the waitlist for transplant,” said Nichtberger. “I look at the opportunity we have to build bladders, to build vessels, to build kidneys. In regenerative medicine, I think it is similar to the semi-conductor industry of the 1980s, you don’t know where it’s going to go, but you know it’s big.”"
» hasn’t there been enough information posted here already to disprove it?
»
» it certainly seems so.
»
» yet some people continue writing letters and raising false alarms…
ACELL, the COMPANY, has been notified via Willy, that their powder has garnered interest as a possible indication to regrow hair on damaged skin (like the back of your head after a hair transplant). Its up to ACELL, more than anyone else, to actually try it and test it to see if its efficious.
Its not up to internet posters on a hair loss website forum to decree “it doesnt’ work”. If ACELL is interested in entering this potentially VERY lucrative market, they will organize a test and test it themselves.
Dr. Jones may/may not find that its good for helping scars heal more seamlessly than they do and promote some growth in the scar. Until then, we are all just speculating based on photos of how some animals healed on their site.
It’s too early to have an answer about Acell. That’s all there is to it.
If you need to have an opinion then you’re free to form one. Either way is supportable right now. But no amount of people building strong enough feelings is gonna speed up time by several months.
We can keep talking about it every day or totally ignore it, but we’ll be no closer to knowing either way.