Takeaways from the Jahoda/Christiano Study

I think there are some big “takeaways” here:

  1. The study was, by definition, about allogenic transfer of cultured cells, meaning from the tissue of one person to the tissue of another person. The human foreskin tissue (grafted onto the mice) was obviously taken from people other than the donors of the DP cells. The foreskin tissue was from recently circumcised infants; the DP cell donors were adults. I don’t think this has any direct bearing on the experimental results – I think it would have worked just as well if the skin grafted onto mice was from the same subject as the DP cells. However, this is interesting because if further confirms what Jarjarbinx has been saying here, that hair follicle cells such as DP cells are immuno-privileged, meaning when DP cells are transferred to an allogenic host, there is no sign of immune rejection. This may have implications down the line, but again, I don’t think it’s essential that the transfer be allogenic for it to grow follicles. To assume that would be muddled thinking. Jarjarbinx is getting very excited – I think too excited – about the idea of transplanting allogenic cultures. The fact is that there is nothing that we know that indicates allogenicity is key to its working. On the other hand, to assume that this finding in itself is insignificant or medically irrelevant is also muddled thinking. (My personal belief is that eventually, medical science and regulators might accept allogenic cell transplants, particularly using immuno-privileged cells – but this is not going to happen anytime soon, and it makes no sense right now for us to waste our energies pushing this idea, because there’s no reason at all to believe allogenicity is necessary for this technique to generate hair.)

  2. The new hair follicles being created here are just that – brand new, de novo follicles. They can’t be revived miniaturized follicles, because human foreskin tissue has no hair follicles at all. Therefore I think Jahoda and Christiano are correct to say that this is the first ever proven example of creation of neogenic human hair follicles. Others who have implied this (Histogen) or have claimed it outright (Follica) have not proved it yet with incontrovertible evidence. However, the Jahoda/Christiano evidence is impossible to deny. They are creating brand new follicles.

  3. The hairs being produced right now are very small. This is probably due to the fact that they’ve only partially protected the genetic transcription profile of the original in vivo DP cells. I believe they’ve reported that 22% of the donor DP cells’ relevant genes are working, and they said they were surprised they got that much hair to grow with only 22% of the important genes. Imagine if they were able to increase that to say, 50% or 60%, or 90%. You can see where this is leading. I think now that they know what they have to do, they are on track to gradually increasing the “in vivo” genetic profile, and getting better yields, thicker hair, etc. They are on track, but of course it won’t happen overnight.

  4. The key here is reprogramming the cells. I believe this is an outside-the-box idea that Aderans never thought of; hence, Aderans never got this far. My guess is that they may have learned about Jahoda and Christiano’s success in the past year, through the “scientific grapevine” – and that’s why ARI lost funding from its parent company. They saw no more reason to dump additional money into HM when someone else had beaten them using a brand new idea which they had no rights to. If you read some of the relevant statements by Dr. Christiano, it was Dr. Jahoda who made this discovery and conceived this “reprogramming” technique, almost by chance. Obviously, Aderans hadn’t thought of this, otherwise ARI would still be funded.

This news has been all over the major networks and newspapers in the past 24 hours. There’s no doubt that this is real, significant news. Here are some sample links, from the New York Times and from the ABC Network in Australia:

Roger_that, I would be the first to admit that I’m not 100% sure that what I’m saying is doable. I am not 100% convinced of what I’m saying. However I might have a point and not one poster has posted one hard-science piece of solid evidence that shows that I’m wrong.

Check the below link out. I’m sure you’ve heard of Bernstein Medical. He’s a highly respected Hair doctor and here is an article with him in which he mentions Jahoda’s work:

And here’s one of the important quote (Italics and enlarging by me) from this article:

“Another interesting aspect of their experiment is that the donor cells came from a male but the recipient, who actually grew the hair, was a female. The importance of this is that donor cells can be transferred from one person to another without being rejected. Since repeat implantations did not provoke the typical rejection responses, even though the donor was of the opposite sex and had a significantly different genetic profile, this indicates that the dermal sheath cells have a special immune status and that the lower hair follicle is one of the bodies “immune privileged” sites.”

There’s other important stuff in this article too. Check this quote from the article out (Italics and enlarging by me):

“In addition, there is some evidence that the recipient skin can influence the look of the hair. Thus, the final appearance of the patient may more closely resemble the bald person’s original hair, than the hair of the person donating the inducer cells. The person-to-person transfer of cells would be important in situations where there was a total absence of hair. Fortunately, in androgenetic alopecia (genetic hair loss) there is a supply of hair on the back and sides of the scalp that would serve as the source of dermal sheath cells, so the transfer between people would rarely be necessary.”

And another key quote from this article (Italics by me):

“Probably the most important aspect of this experiment is the fact that these “inducer” dermal sheath cells are fibroblasts. Fibroblasts, as it turns out, are among the easiest of all cells to culture, so that the donor area could potentially serve as an unlimited supply of hair.”

But even if the allograft donor’s donor area couldn’t be restored we would still only seek half the donor area from any donors so the donors would still have donor area. Of course we would try to do this in a manner that gave the donor’s area a chance to regenerate but even if didn’t the worse case scenario is that each donor would lose half of their donor area via their donation.

I’ve been waiting forever and the cure has always seemed just around the corner, it’s always just 5 years away. I started following this site in my mid 20s and now I’m in my early 40s.

I think however they probably are on the right track this time. I think back to how great I looked with my long thick wavy hair as a 20 yr old kid and took it all for granted. I thought I’d never lose it-now I’m down to about half of what I had and forming a bald spot.

Fortunately I aged well so my face is much the same-if I had my hair back and got back in shape I’d be pretty studly again. That’s my goal-so going to keep working out and hopefully these guys can deliver a cure by the time I’m 45 so I can at least enjoy my hair for another decade or so.

Bernstein is saying the same thing I’m saying. Look here at Bernstein’s credentials:

Who do you trust more - Hairman & Jimmy or Jahoda and Bernstein?

Jahoda transplanted these cells from himself to his wife - that tells you that both Jahoda and his wife believed that these cells are immune privileged. Jahoda’s wife is not an idiot either - she’s an accomplished cellular researcher herself.

The only reason we aren’t considering this is because we’re scared…not because the science says it’s a bad idea.

Even if they do have something, its going to take at least 10 years to get through the FDA wall of bureaucracy.

jajar you idiot. I repeated in every post that it may well be true that allogenic transfer of DP cell tissue is safe. That is not my point. The point is that it will have to be proven to the FDA in clinical trials, which is not feasible, particularly because it is not neccessary!!! now please stfu on this issue no one wants to read another 50 posts from you on this topic in which you exhibit your dunning-kruger disorder.

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by jarjarbinx[/postedby]
Bernstein is saying the same thing I’m saying. Look here at Bernstein’s credentials:

Who do you trust more - Hairman & Jimmy-the-monkey or Jahoda and Bernstein?

Jahoda transplanted these cells from himself to his wife - that tells you that both Jahoda and his wife believed that these cells are immune privileged. Jahoda’s wife is not an idiot either - she’s an accomplished cellular researcher herself.[/quote]

Roger_that, and the donor tissue, like you said, was from multiple people so the recipient tissue accepted the donor tissue from multiple different donors, not just one donor. This seems to suggest that you could put multiple donors cells (of this type) into a person without prompting a rejection reaction.

This strongly supports what I’m suggesting.

Now I do admit that I still have a few concerns:

  1. Maybe they just aren’t putting enough cells to generate an immune reaction, but if you put more cells you would have an immune reaction.

  2. As I said, I would recommend multiple repeat treatments so if you did repeat treatments might you then initiate an immune reaction? I don’t know.

Bernstein seems to be saying that Jahoda did repeat implantations of his cells into his wife’s arm without an immune reaction so repeat injections may be safe,if Bernstein is correct about Jahoda doing repeat implantations of his own hair cells into his wife’s arm. See this quote by Bernstein:

Another interesting aspect of their experiment is that the donor cells came from a male but the recipient, who actually grew the hair, was a female. The importance of this is that donor cells can be transferred from one person to another without being rejected. Since repeat implantations did not provoke the typical rejection responses, even though the donor was of the opposite sex and had a significantly different genetic profile, this indicates that the dermal sheath cells have a special immune status and that the lower hair follicle is one of the bodies “immune privileged” sites.

No . You may have said that it’s possible that they could use allograft donor tissue in this case but you don’t really believe it. That’s why you don’t want to bother trying to find all the evidence we can about this possibility.

And it does not have to be approved by the FDA in order for us to do it.

And why are you saying that it’s unnecessary to use allografts from other donors? If we use autografted (from our own bodies) then we’ll have to wait until they can do this with the same degree of success that they can ALREADY do it using allografts now. It could take years for researchers to solve the problems associated with the loss of inductivity related to using autografts to do this job. Christiano said that even after their recent study they still only achieved 22% of the required genetic response to keep inductivity active in the cells. They still need to find a way to get the other 78% of cellular expression taking place and that could take years. But if they use allograft donor tissue they can do it right now.

What is “unnecessary” is your proposal that we wait years for researchers to figure out a way to do this treatment via autografts achieving the same success rates that they could with allografts now even though they could simply do the autografts now and achieve those success rates right now.

You don’t want to do the allografting because you’re fearful about the idea of the immune system rejecting the transfer material even though you have NO evidence that would happen and indeed you DO have evidence the immune system won’t reject the allograft material in this case. You’re like one of those people thousands of years ago who refused to accept new evidence that the world isn’t flat. If you had been alive when it was proved the world isn’t flat you would have clung to your old incorrect beliefs that the world is flat .

[quote]jajar you idiot. I repeated in every post that it may well be true that allogenic transfer of DP cell tissue is safe. That is not my point. The point is that it will have to be proven to the FDA in clinical trials, which is not feasible, particularly because it is not neccessary!!! now please stfu on this issue no one wants to read another 50 posts from you on this topic in which you exhibit your … disorder.

[postedby]Originally Posted by jarjarbinx[/postedby]
Bernstein is saying the same thing I’m saying. Look here at Bernstein’s credentials:

Who do you trust more - Hairman & Jimmy-the-monkey or Jahoda and Bernstein?

Jahoda transplanted these cells from himself to his wife - that tells you that both Jahoda and his wife believed that these cells are immune privileged. Jahoda’s wife is not an idiot either - she’s an accomplished cellular researcher herself.

[postedby]Originally Posted by hairman2[/postedby][/quote]

Hairman You are the exact same as those people hundreds and hundreds of years ago who would not accept that the world is not flat.

[quote]jajar you idiot. I repeated in every post that it may well be true that allogenic transfer of DP cell tissue is safe. That is not my point. The point is that it will have to be proven to the FDA in clinical trials, which is not feasible, particularly because it is not neccessary!!! now please stfu on this issue no one wants to read another 50 posts from you on this topic in which you exhibit your dunning-kruger disorder.

[postedby]Originally Posted by jarjarbinx[/postedby]
Bernstein is saying the same thing I’m saying. Look here at Bernstein’s credentials:

Who do you trust more - Hairman & Jimmy-the-monkey or Jahoda and Bernstein?

Jahoda transplanted these cells from himself to his wife - that tells you that both Jahoda and his wife believed that these cells are immune privileged. Jahoda’s wife is not an idiot either - she’s an accomplished cellular researcher herself.

[postedby]Originally Posted by hairman2[/postedby][/quote]

Yea sure if you do it in America. But they can implant allograft HF cells into people right now in other parts of the globe.

Roger-that,

  1. I’m not saying that allografting is key to the process working. I’m saying that if we did it by way of allografting we could do it NOW but if we insist on doing it via autografts it could take years for science to figure out a way to do that.

  2. The thing is that in order to do it by autografts then we would definitely have to wait until they solve the problem of inductivity because they would have to keep the cells out of the body for months so they could culture enough cells.
    Right now they can only get 22% of the genes necessary for culture that would protect the inductivity of the cells. That means they need to figure out how to get the other 78% of genes to express and that could take years.

  3. On the other hand if we used allografts there is already plenty of available tissue that would not require years of discovery to find out how to protect the inductivity of the donor cells. We could just get the cells from different people and do a couple quick passes of culturing in a day or two and then implant however much cells we collect over a day or two of culturing, which is what Jahoda apparently did. But we could start out with more cells because we could harvest half of the donor area cells inside of a donor’s tissue and use all of that to culture for a day or two before implanting. But first we would have to find out how long after Jahoda harvested the cells from his head did he culture (if he did culture at all) before implanting the cells into his wife’s arm.

The difference is that if we use allograft tissue we can do it NOW. We wouldn’t need to spend time trying to figure out how to get all of the autograft genes to express in culture so we could keep the cells out of the body long enough to culture for a month or two. If we use allograft tissue we could harvest and implant right away or culture for a day or two at most because there is a lot of people out there with donor tissue that might be willing to give up donor tissue. If the donor tissue from one donor isn’t enough to give us enough cells throughout our heads then we get the donor tissue from 3 people, or 4 people, or 5 people. We then culture for a day or two and then implant quickly or else implant right away after we harvest the tissue, depending on whether or not Jahoda cultured for a day or two before implanting his cells into his wife’s arm.

The difference is NOW vs years from now.

fyi organ transplants from male to female and vice versa are not uncommon. Sex does not play a major roll. There are some studies that suggest that same-sex transplants are preferable at best.

Here’s an audio interview with Jahoda:

So F’n what Tarzan? There is other evidence that these HF cell allografts are immune-privileged. You make it sound like the only evidence is the trx from Collin Jahoda to his wife but there’s other evidence and we should be contemplating whether or not these HF cells are immune-privileged or not. Besides, the fact still remains that Collin and his wife are two different people and her immune system did not react when his HF cells were implanted into her.

I apologize for calling you Tarzan but look Hairman the truth is that you have thrown me for a loop by your rejection of hard science in favor of superstition. I think you’re rude and arrogant, but I have also always thought that you adhere to facts pretty well when you make a point. You are definitely the last person here I would have expected a rejection-of-hard-science-in-favor-of-the-old-ways-logic from. I never would have expected this sort of rejection of hard science from you. I kind of anticipated that you would come up with some link proving that all the scientiss are wrong and these HF cells really aren’t immune-privileged, but I never once would have imagined you rejecting facts with no evidence to back up your position. I never would have imagined you rejecting hard science facts and favoring let’s-respect-the-elders-and-the-old-ways logic instead. I’m floored to see you, of all people, favoring superstition over hard science.

I’m not saying we should go and have someone else’s cells implanted into our heads immediately. All I’m saying is that we should examine the issue to try to get to the bottom of this. It doesn’t help when someone as smart as you goes all “let’s-respect-the-old-ways” scared and closes his mind. We need to look at the facts. I’m very dissapointed in you Hairman; I thought you were smarter than you have been behaving the past few days.

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by hairman2[/postedby]
fyi organ transplants from male to female and vice versa are not uncommon. Sex does not play a major roll. There are some studies that suggest that same-sex transplants are preferable at best.[/quote]

You guys realize that this news was released at the ISHRS conference earlier this summer, and that Dr. Nigam himself posted the abstract? Furthermore, Christiano and Jahoda have had a patent on this for a while and it’s been discussed many times on this forum.

I fail to see what the excitement is about, it’s old news.