No one has started a thread on this rather important topic, so I thought I would begin with a bit of a primer based on what I know and take things from there. There appear to be some very promising things on the horizon:
CELL THERAPY This is the injection of dermal papillae cells into the scalp to get dormant follicles to grow new hair. Leading the way on this front in Dr. Walter Unger of Toronto, who has been conducting human trials. In 205 of his test subjects, he has grown cosmetically acceptable hair via injection. Too much beyond that has not been made known. The key thing is that it works, the key problem is that it did not work in all of the test subjects, and the key challenge for Unger and his team is to determine why it worked in some and not in others. I do not know when such technology, if perfected, will be ready for clinical use. Some say 2-3 years, other say 5 years, some think it will take until 2010. We should know more from Dr. Unger about his human trials in the first half of this year. It should be noted that other researchers are working on cell therapy and while Unger appears to be in the lead, his project is not the only one on the track. The successful development of cell therapy quite likely would end hair transplantation as we know it.
HAIR MULTIPLICATION This is commonly called hair cloning. It involves the lab replication, i.e. cloning, of the follicular structure. In essence, the successful clinical application would allow transplant surgeons, in conjunction with the labs, to be able to have an unlimited donor supply of the patient's own hair. It would change hair transplants in that a large piece of donor scalp would no longer have to be taken, although presumably the implantation of the grafts, in sufficient number to produce desired density, would be performed similarly. At this stage, there does not appear to be any one researcher in the lead on this front. While there was a lot of talk in the past few years about Dr. Coen Gho in Europe, he continues to move back the promised arrival of his hair multiplication process time and time again, so there is no estimable timetable for this technology that I know of. Clearly, if a safe and successful application of cell therapy is on the market first, hair multiplication will likely be obsolete.
OTHER THERAPIES The search for a completely non-surgical cure continues among many researchers, one to keep an eye on is Dr. Angela Christiano in New York, who I understand is working on identifying the "baldness gene", which might be the ending point in the research process.
*This is what I know from my own research into the subject. To many, the information contained in this post is common knowledge, to other, it may be new. To that latter group, I encourage you to read about these things and to consider them when and if you decide you want to do something about hair loss.
And of course, if I left out anything, which I surely must have, others should pitch in.
Thanks for an interesting post. I would really like to see more insightful posts on this subject. These advances have great implications, especially for those with very limited donor hair.
I was just speaking today with Dr. McAndrews about advances in cell therapy and I found his comments to be very interesting.
I will email this topic to his attention and ask him to contribute his insights.
Pat
Thanks for reading this post. But it's your posts that make this discussion group real and vital. Please jump into the discussion. Just pick a topic and click the reply button.
After rereading the post I saw my caps lock key didn't get held down at it read as if Unger grew hair in "205" of his test subjects, when in fact, it was "20%" that I meant to type.
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Posted
Surely you mean Shift key. You can't type "%" using caps lock key (it only works for capitalizing characters)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic''. Arthur C. Clarke
