Yale Arthritis Drug Trial Grows Full Head of Hair for patient

Stem cell; cell based hair therapy
41

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by cal[/postedby]
I’m not really advocating people start taking oral doses of these drugs for months to see what happens.

I’m just saying that Cotsarelis declaring it useless for MPB is bullsh*t. Nothing that puts massive amounts of hair on areas that have been long-balded or never had scalp hair is useless for MPB. I’ll listen to Cotsarelis’s dismissals as soon as he starts producing results 1/4th as good as these drugs are producing by accident. Literally.

The sooner we understand why this class of drugs works, the better. We never be able to take these drugs and have it work but the mechanism may be utilized some other, safer way.

But first the MPB research community has to take their heads out of their asses long enough to study this. Jahoda/Christiano are trying hard on something useful but that’s about it. We would be better served if everyone else in the MPB research game would stop what they are doing (including drugs in human trials) and begin studying what is happening with this class of drugs. And I was saying the same thing 5-6 years ago.[/quote]

Cotsarelis is Not against research of these drugs, his issue seemed to be more to do with commercialization of these drugs Considering some of the horrific side effects these drugs could have including tuberculosis and death. I’m a strong supporter of more research into baldness, but any drug with such side effects is Not worth commercializing in my opinion Nor is it worth using. The other angle to this is that if you were to commercialize it, then a lot of desperate young man will jump on it even after realizing the major side effects these drugs could have. Statistically, many would end up with the side effects and could ruin their health and/or lives for good. All this for a cosmetic condition…worth it?

42

Does Cotsarelis know that there is no hope of spurring the same hair-generating effects from this class of drugs with some other, safer means?

Does every other MPB researching group know that already?

No!

Nobody knows sh*t, because nobody has studied this phenomenon! They can’t even reproduce this effect on command in a lab, using the dangerous drugs, if they wanted to! They don’t even know enough to be rejecting this!

This class of drugs is producing some of the most potent regrowth cases in modern medical history. This is not provoking any study among MPB researchers - people who dump millions of dollars into stuff that has never produced 1/4th as much potential in the real world.

43

[quote]Nobody knows sh*t, because nobody has studied this phenomenon! They can’t even reproduce this effect on command in a lab, using the dangerous drugs, if they wanted to! They don’t even know enough to be rejecting this!

This class of drugs is producing some of the most potent regrowth cases in modern medical history. This is not provoking any study among MPB researchers - people who dump millions of dollars into stuff that has never produced 1/4th as much potential in the real world.[/quote]

Cal, you’ve said that no one knows sh*t, and that may be true, but have there been any cases of regrowth from these drugs in people who’ve lost their hair purely as a result of MPB, as opposed to other types of alopecia?

I agree that the underlying mechanism of what these drugs are doing deserves to be investigated, but one clue we might have from which to draw some inductive conclusions is, have any Norwood 5, 6 or 7 people with pure MPB seen significant regrowth when taking these drugs?

If that’s not the case, and it’s only people with other causes of alopecia, e.g., alopecia totalis or alopecia universalis, who have ever benefited from these drugs, then I think we can safely write off the benefit of further research for MPB.

Granted, we know very little about how these drugs regrow hair. And we can infer that there must be some connection, even if tenuous, between the hair loss mechanism of MPB and the other alopecias.

But if people with MPB only have never regrown hair with them, then a very reasonable inference would be that they’ll never be found useful for MPB, and further research of that angle would not likely bear fruit.

44

What part of, “Gefitnib grew thick dense terminal hairs on a patient’s NW#6 scalp, and on the end of another patient’s nose” don’t you understand?

These other two cases were real. They happened. I have been pointing out that they happened for years, long before this new case popped up. Any other consistent reader of these forums about 6-7 years ago should remember the story and the pics circulating too.

Is it hard to believe these others happened? Well this new Alopecia Areata regrowth case will probably seem just as improbable to newer forum members in about 2020, after MPB researchers have continued to ignore this class of drugs for another 6-7 years.

45

[quote][postedby]Originally Posted by cal[/postedby]
What part of, “Gefitnib grew thick dense terminal hairs on a patient’s NW#6 scalp, and on the end of another patient’s nose” don’t you understand?

These other two cases were real. They happened. I have been pointing out that they happened for years, long before this new case popped up. Any other consistent reader of these forums about 6-7 years ago should remember the story and the pics circulating too.

Is it hard to believe these others happened? Well this new Alopecia Areata regrowth case will probably seem just as improbable to newer forum members in about 2020, after no MPB researchers have studied this class of drugs again for another 6-7 years.[/quote]

Gefitnib? What happened to the NW6 patient? Is he retaining the new hair all these years?

46

He’s dead. He was getting treated for terminal cancer when the whole thing happened.

He didn’t regrow his whole head. It was just a patch (maybe golf-ball size?) right on top of his chrome-dome. But it was dense, terminal, and I recall it even didn’t have the graying like the rest of his original hair on the sides did.

At the time we were speculating that both of those older cases might have been caused by sunburns serving as “scalp wounding.” Let me say again, that sunburn idea was pure speculation. But there were a few different factors being talked about at the time, suggesting that a sunburn might have been a possible contributor to the wounding/regrowth process. At the time we were thinking that a wound while on the drug might have explained why the regrowth happened to just those patients in just those rather odd places.

But in the big picture it had to be more than that. We would have discovered it a long time ago if anyone taking that class of drugs was growing scalp hair anywhere they got injured or sunburned. It had to be something else too. Thousands of people have taken these drugs and virtually none of them have gotten these bursts of new hair growth.

47

Even if they start doing study on this class of drugs now, it will probably take another 5 years (at least) before we see anything on the market. I guess 5 years is better than never but this whole situation is making me more pessimistic than ever that there will be a breakthrough treatment in the near future.

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

This class of drugs is producing some of the most potent regrowth cases in modern medical history. This is not provoking any study among MPB researchers - people who dump millions of dollars into stuff that has never produced 1/4th as much potential in the real world.[/quote]

48

To tell you the truth, I think there is just about a 0% chance of pharamceutical companies or top researchers pursuing this class of drugs. I don’t understand why people here don’t see that the writing is already on the wall, and has been for many years. We’re not talking about Minoxidil, which just dilates small blood vessels and has other minimal physiological effects. We’re not even talking about powerful androgen blockers here. We’re talking about a class of drugs that has very dramatic and fundamental effects on cells and cell growth. This is precisely the kind of drug class which is potentially DEADLY with long-term exposure. The scientific community already knows this. And you think they’ll suddenly convince some big pharma company to do clinical trials for a COSMETIC indication like MPB??? Hahaha, dream on!!

This line of research will not be pursued to cure hairloss, no matter how much you folks might wish it. Don’t waste your time thinking about it, the risks for the pharma companies are UNACCEPTABLE. The cost-benefit analysis just does not pan out. It will not happen, end of story.

Next.

49

(rolling eyes)

I’m just going to repeat my own previous comment here. It doesn’t seem to be sinking in yet.

Does Cotsarelis know that there is no hope of spurring the same hair-generating effects from this class of drugs with some other, safer means?

Does every other MPB researching group know that already?

No!

Nobody knows sh*t, because nobody has studied this phenomenon! They can’t even reproduce this effect on command in a lab, using the dangerous drugs, if they wanted to! They don’t even know enough to be rejecting this!

This class of drugs is producing some of the most potent regrowth cases in modern medical history. This is not provoking any study among MPB researchers - people who dump millions of dollars into stuff that has never produced 1/4th as much potential in the real world.

50

It seems that the cases of dramatic regrowth are just too few and far between for these drugs to be interesting to researchers as potential hair regrowth agents. That combined with the potential for complicated, major and potentially deadly side effects just puts these drugs on the danger list and writes them off as realistic candidates.

Here’s the mechanism of these drugs:

“It is an inhibitor of the enzyme janus kinase 3 (JAK3), which means that it interferes with the JAK-STAT signaling pathway, which transmits extracellular information into the cell nucleus, influencing DNA transcription.”

Have you read that??? Do you realize what these drugs are doing?? They interfere with a signaling pathway which transmits extracellular information into the cell nucleus. I believe “Janus kinase” enzyme is called that because, like the Greek god Janus, it has two identical “faces” – one that faces outside the cell, and one facing inside, and they act in opposite ways. It is a very basic and essential part of how signals from the outside of the cell influence the DNA inside the nucleus.

But we know that extracellular information HAS TO BE transmitted into the cell nucleus for normal activity of cells to continue.

What these drugs are doing is basically stopping normal cell activity so a person can have a brief clinical respite from the pain and joint degeneration of rheumatoid arthritis. It is a highly calculated risk, exposing these RA patients to potential cell-level danger for the sake of giving them some brief temporary escape from a ruinous and painful degenerative disease. It’s basically flipping “off” a very fundamental cytologic pathway, a biochemical switch involved at the most basic level in DNA transcription, to help these people.

And that switch appears to be very non-specific. Who knows everything that’s happening to these cells and their DNA? Given the fundamental, root level interference with DNA expression, it’s no wonder things like hair regrowth might suddenly happen. Probably what’s happening in these isolated cases is that something in the MPB-causative pathway is being stopped. So it makes sense. Maybe it’s interfering with however something like PGD2 – which acts outside the cells – signals the cell nucleus to send the commands that shut down hair follicles.

It might be interesting to explore that in a lab at the basic science level, but again, it looks like the effects of these drugs are NON-SPECIFIC with respect to their action, so shutting down this enzyme would have unpredictable and potentially very broad – and unacceptably dangerous – effects on many other pathways and activities of cells. Who knows what the long-term sequelae might be? Do we even want to go there?

I think Cotsarelis and other potential researchers are actually smart enough to have realized this, and they know they’re not going to convince any investors, universities, biotech firms, or big pharma companies to plunge money into a losing proposition, basic research with little potential application, especially when the cases of hair regrowth are rare and anecdotal, not ubiquitous, and the risks tremendous. It’s a flat-out losing financial and scientific proposition. Money gravitates to where the prospects of success seem to be good, not to pie-in-the-sky ventures.

51

The history of trying to treat MPB is littered with ideas that were very commercially sellable. They just never figured out the growing hair part. Aderans was a very realistic grounded plan to sell . . a pie-in-the-sky hope that it would regrow hair. Both ways leave the investors with nothing when they fail, it’s just a different way of ending up there.

Growing hair is the next thing we need to figure out how to do if we ever want to get MPB treated. We don’t even understand how to do it, let alone how to do it safely. I think the history of medical research suggests that once we figure out how this works we are more likely to come up with a safer way of inducing it than trying to attack MPB by methods with no assurance they are capable of working at all.

52

Remember this guy’s appearance in YouTube and here? A lot of people were quick to write him off as a sc@mmer. I’m not so sure of that. It’s just that it’s too hard for some people to wrap their brains around the possibility that you can have the very rare, isolated cases where if you make a certain shift in cell chemistry and the signaling environment, and the person’s underlying chemistry and case of MPB is just right, it can actually result in dramatic regrowth on a bald scalp. These cases are known in medicine as “idiosyncratic” reactions, where given everything we know, something shouldn’t happen, but it still does. The problem is REPLICATING these rare cases, and that’s a whole different story.

By the way, I’d like to see an update from Kevin. Has he kept what he regrew?

53

Roger_that,

I agree with you on this. These idiosyncratic responses deserve further analysis.

Last year I was very excited about Kevin’s approach (see post below) and I still am.

The remarkable case of Kevin Nguyen (Hair Multiplication & Stem Cells Treatment)
posted by Follicular, 11.05.2013, 07:01

This guy seems totally legitimate and authentic to me.

I think he stumbled across one of the great truths about treating hair loss. Which is that there is no single silver bullet solution, but rather, a multitude of factors working synergistically that reverses the biological programming for baldness.

Neither he, nor anyone else at this stage, knows precisely what this combination of factors is. Nor how the synergistic process works. But it would be a productive exercise for a serious, well-equipped researcher to systematically analyse what Kevin Nguyen did – and try to replicate the results with other people.

Kevin, if you read this – congratulations on what you have done. Many scientific breakthroughs have occurred through people like you – working alone – with a great deal of persistence. I wish you well.

Follicular

54

I disagree about multiple factors to reverse MPB.

There are probably a bunch of factors involved. But aside from varying degrees of susceptibility, varying patterns of scalp loss, and varying androgen levels in general, I see no real difference in cases of MPB. If MPB takes hair then it is gone. If MPB damages hair then it stays damaged. Roughly the same drugs will and won’t work on it for everyone. Etc.

On the forums everyone makes so much of every little difference we observe among our cases. But IN THE BIG PICTURE all these differences are miniscule. For all of us the disease gets kicked into gear by the same things, it progresses in the same way as far as anyone can tell, and the progression is ROUGHLY just as permanent in all of us. All the differences look to me like different bodies experiencing basically the same phenomenon.

If there was much of any variation in what was giving us MPB then one of the first things you’d expect to see is more progress halting & reversing it. But there is essentially none. Once the process starts the patient is F*CKED and nothing on heaven & earth can put an end to it. At best we can slow the progression with a lot of targeted effort. That is the mark of a specific consistent chain of events.