Report from local TV news in San Diego on Stemson’s discovery. They also say the Stemson procedure will cost “about as much as hair transplants”…
So far, testing has proven successful in mice. Human testing is still years away as the company works towards FDA approval.
Even if Tsuji tries to charge $180,000 to $300,000 initially, treatments like Stemson’s treatment will push Tsuji’s price down a few years later.
No need to wait for Stemson’s trial now that we will have Tsuji as early as 2020.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-019-00178-x
Given the whole hairloss cure snake oil history I can imagine a bogus “stem cell cure” fast tracking it’s way through Japan’s lower regulatory environment.
Pretty happy Stemson is there in the background myself.
Hoping Tsuji is the cure though 
RIKEN is one of the top research institutions in the world, I really doubt that they’d be involved with snake oils.
It’s progress, although the “years away” and the “it works on mice!” lines obviously sound familiar to those of us who have been following this topic for years.
If it’s $10,000 for the Stemson follicles and, say, $6 for a doctor to implant them, 5000 grafts (10,000 to 15,000 hairs) will come to $40,000. Start saving your nickels, folks.
Dr. Terskyh said the treatment would cost about the same as hair transplants. He didn’t say there would be different charges like “$10,000 for the follicles” and a separate charge for the implantation of the follicles. There might be separate items in your bill, but I’m taking him at his word that the whole package together will cost about the same as standard hair transplants cost now.
There’s no difference between saving up money for this and saving for a hair transplant. You’ll be spending around the same amount of money, according to Dr Terskyh. So I don’t understand your negativity, how is this any more difficult to bear than paying for a HT? And people get HT without even thinking about it.
Also, the “years away” thing is a phrase that’s often used by people in a negative context, like HT clinics telling us not to wait for “hair cloning” because it’s “years away”. That phrase is meaningless because it’s so vague and people think “years away” could be like 10-20 years away.
In this context he didn’t say “years away” he said “a few years away”, which could be something like 2-3 years. Also, the latest we’re hearing from Tsuji now is 2020, so that’s only 1 year away for the trials.
Yeah, there will be some waiting but at this point they’ve done most of the work and research, the final countdown for this will be something more like 2 years, for us to see the first people getting some of these treatments.
Tsuji is irrelevant to most of us as only the exclusive 1% can afford his price. So I am all for Stemson trials and others that compete with Tsuji’s ridiculous pricing.
Roger, you misunderstood my “Save your nickels” comment as negative. I seriously think guys should start saving money for this. As for my estimate of the cost, the article above says, “Eventually, they say the cost of the new cells will be similar to the cost of hair transplant surgery now, which can run upwards of $10,000.” If someone has said elsewhere that the cost of the cells AND the procedure to implant them will be around $10,000, no one is happier than I am about that! But, I took the $10,000 for the cells and combined it with what I thought was the likely cost to have them implanted.
As for the years away thing, the article says, “Human testing is still years away as the company works towards FDA approval.” Not “a few years away”, as you said. “Years away”, as I said.
But again, I have absolutely no negative feelings about this article. And I always appreciate your posts.
Thanks for that, Rich - and it’s OK, I see what you meant now.
I think there is another opportunity for Stemson with this discovery, that they may want to pursue. Essentially their discovery is to take human somatic cells, convert them into iPS cells, and then convert the iPSCs into inductive dermal papilla cells. Then from those cells (combined with other harvested cells, I think), they create follicles.
Remember that the reason Intercytex and Aderans failed was that they couldn’t generate enough inductive DP cells, or the DP cells they were able to culture lost their inductivity at some point in the culturing process of expanding the numbers of cells.
So when they injected those cultured DP cells, they were not reliable at growing hair. They couldn’t generate new hair or combine with existing miniaturized follicles in the scalp to regenerate them.
But now they have a way of getting an unlimited supply of inductive DP cells. So why not try just injecting those directly into the scalp?
I realize that it’s much more of a guaranteed cure to first create follicle germs in vitro, and then implant them. That allows them to ensure the number of new hairs they can provide to patients.
With cell injections, it’s kind of a roll of the dice because you don’t really know if an injection will produce hair. Some of it may depend on whether the patient has enough miniaturized follicles that are still viable, that are still receptive to injected DP cells.
But now that we know Stemson can produce unlimited amounts of inductive DP cells, why don’t they just try another route and inject the cells?
Based on what Intercytex and Aderans wanted to do (and what Replicel still plans to do), many of these inductive cells might help revive miniaturized follicles and help patients regrow substantial amounts of hair.
It’s not as much of a guaranteed proposition as growing new follicles in vitro, but it’s probably much cheaper (a lot less lab work, fewer steps and less equipment required), easier to do, and it’s something they could probably test much quicker and possibly get approved more easily. It would probably be much less expensive for patients too, because there’s no need for follicle implantation by a HT surgeon.
I’m surprised they don’t at least plan to offer that as an option. After all, how much money do people spend on Minoxidil and Propecia, which offer no more of a guarantee than injecting inductive DP cells?
From what I remember researchers are trying to combine two cells - DP cells plus another cell. I’m not sure what the other cell is but I think it’s the dermal sheath cup cells that they’re looking to combine with DP cells. I think Jahoda talked about it. Roger, you’re undoubtedly more informed than me regards to the other cell researchers have been looking at to use along with DP cells.
I also wish they would try just injecting inducted DP cells but I don’t know if it would work or not. Still, I also think it’s worth a try.
Also, I think that Stemson is better because it doesn’t use cells from your own donor area follicles which may be kind of beat up from circulating androgens. Sure they aren’t as beat up as the follicles on the top of your head but they are somewhat beat up. My donor hairs have gotten a little thinner in diameter and a little shorter in length, although not like the hairs on the top of my head. If you use cells from beat-up areas of your scalp the follicles they create could miniaturize quickly. I remember reading that when Eunuchs are injected with androgens all of their hair falls out in weeks or months rather than years.
I wish Stemson and Replicel would join forces. If they did then they would be nearly ready to change the world with their two treatments meshed together to form one treatment. Replicel has the sheath cup cells figured out and Stemson has the other cell DP cells figured out. Stemson also has a solution for the angle and direction hurdle. Replicel is in human trials but I really don’t think Replicel is growing much hair on its’ own. OTOH the two treatments (Replicel + Stemson) meshed together to form one treatment sounds like the solution.
Human testing is too far away IMO. These white coats spend too much time in meetings, prepping, and crap like that. Someone is going to pass up these jokers if they don’t get the lead out.
Most of them now are trying to combine two types of cells, some of them more I think. They’re mainly doing that to form nascent follicles in vitro. They found out that adding epithelial and mesodermal derived cells together induce new follicle formation (which is exactly how it works in the human embryo).
Jahoda’s original experiment used only DP cells (or cells from around the DP, I don’t know how accurate he was in typing the cells back then). But they werent cultured. So they lost no inductivity.
It was later found by intercytex and Aderans that DP cells were losing inductivity when cultured. Their original idea was to use only DP cells, but when they found out that didn’t work well enough, they couldn’t keep changing their protocols and going back to the FDA (or British equivalent) and say they wanted to change their trials and add other types of cells. So they stopped their trials.
I think there may still be an opportunity here for injecting only one type of cell (DP cells or the equivalent made from iPSCs.) If these cells are really inductive, because they’re new, it shouldn’t matter that a second type of cell isn’t being used.
Just my guess…
The FDA sucks. This company needs to investigate Japan’s approval method.
I posted to Admin that we need to do a Q & A with Stemson so that we can make sure they fully understand that they can use Japan’s approval process to get their treatment to market shortly but Admin is not responding to me. I guess Admin doesn’t care if it comes to market sooner than later.