Gives more details… Almost looks like they’re ready to apply for trials:
Interesting, maybe they don’t even need to go through fda trials if this is a matter of extracting these pigment producing cells from one part of the body and then injecting the same cells into the very patient’s scalp.
It looks like this paper goes back to 2018. That was 4 years ago. This should have been in human trials by now if they had already done animal studies, and the paper indicates they had already done studies on multiple animals. So why isn’t it already in human studies?
The pigment producing cells are melanocytes, I assume. Probably a good source of SCUBE3 in non balding follicles.
There’s an incredible amount of PR on the internet about Dr Plikus and his research partner at UCI, Dr Lingzi Liu and their hair regeneration and scar healing studies. I don’t know how I missed it. Apparently I was wrong, he is a “mathematical biologist”, I think he specializes at least partially in gene expression studies which actually does involve a lot of mathematical analysis.
@jarjarbinx I think the above “prospectus” refers to a discovery he made around 2017 and patented in 2018 and was trying to license then. It appears to be a precursor to the SCUBE3 discovery, not the same thing. It looks like he didn’t know anything about SCUBE3’s connection to hair when he made the 2017-2018 discovery. The page I linked appears to be a UCI announcement for prospective investors, that’s why there are no technical terms in it (like “melanocytes” which I’m sure are the pigment producing cells he’s referring to). It looks like at the time he was aware that a “cocktail” of factors from these and other cells could induce hair growth, but now he’s narrowed it down to SCUBE3 as the primary or strongest acting molecule, maybe the key one.
We’ve seen a lot of this kind of talk before about different peptide and protein molecules and gene expression factors being the key to curing hair loss, especially from Drs Christiano, Jahoda, Cotsarelis and others. We’ve mostly seen these claims to be big exaggerations or at the end of the day they turn out to be dead ends.
Still, I’m not trashing this at all. I remain hopeful, their work seems respectable and I hope it goes to trials really soon.
@roger_that I absolutely feel you on not wanting to get too hyped. But considering that this discovery was first theorized via simulations and then proven in experimentation has me pretty pumped.
It seems there is a sound scientific basis as to why this would work in theory, as well as proof that it in fact does what the simulations predicted.
Secondly several research teams and universities collaborated together toward these findings, meaning the results to my understanding have been reproduced by several independent researchers.
And lastly, the fact that they immediately founded a company and are pushing this to trials is also promising as it shows confidence in the findings. I also watched a few analyses from bio-chemist researchers on youtube on the topic, who i personally consider to be knowledgeable, respectable and not overly optimistic usually. Seeing how they were pretty hyped by this discovery - even calling it a kind of holy grail of hair loss has me pretty excited.
I do agree however that we probably shld remain cautious, as there have been too many disappointments in the past, but nonetheless I think this is one of the most promising discoveries that we have seen in a while. And we should monitor it closely