Category: Hair Cloning

Doc,

Give me some straight dope on when you think hair cloning will be available. Meaning, by whatever method, the donor supply goes up. Please give me some kind of guess. You got to have some idea based on what you’ve seen research wise. An educated guess would be greatly appreciate for me and my follicularly challenged brethren.

The 10 year timeline that has been used for well over 10 years now keeps moving.

Unfortunately, I have no more insight into hair cloning progress than you have. The research is ongoing, and I will continue to post anything and everything that I can find about it. I am keeping no secrets.

Snippet from the press release:

RepliCel Life Sciences Inc. today announced that it has been granted a patent by Japan’s Ministry of International Trade and Industry for hair follicle mesenchymal stem cells and their use thereof. These cells are used in RepliCel’s RCH-01 treatment for androgenetic alopecia, also known as pattern hair loss. With the issuance of this patent, RepliCel now has patents issued in Japan, the United States, Australia and the European Union protecting its technology with other jurisdictions still pending.

This patent approval is an important milestone as RepliCel’s licensing partner, Shiseido Company, prepares to conduct human clinical trials using RCH-01. Shiseido has an exclusive license to use RCH-01 in Japan, China, South Korea, Taiwan and the ASEAN countries representing a population of approximately 2.1 billion people. According to the International Society of Hair Restoration (ISHR), the leading authority on hair loss treatment and restoration, almost one million patients sought treatment for hair loss in 2012. Of this number, 41% of the patients were from Asia, representing the largest single region, surpassing the United States by 15%.

Read the rest — RepliCel Receives Japanese Patent Covering its Hair Regeneration Technology

Snippet from the article:

We may now be a hair’s breadth away from a cure for baldness. For the first time, new human hairs have been coaxed into growing from specialised skin cells that can be multiplied in number to potentially create a full head of hair.

Hair-raising remedies for hair loss currently consist of hormonal drugs to slow the process and hair transplants – where a section of hair follicles is moved from one area of the head to another. Finding a way to grow more hair, however, has proved difficult.

Hair growth in adults occurs naturally in a process known as hair neogenesis – where cells called dermal papilla cells that span the top two layers of skin coax surrounding cells to form hair follicles. One reason hair loss occurs is when papillae stop working.

Read the rest at New Scientist — 3D drops raise hopes of cure for baldness

I posted a few links about this research last month, but I just read this article in New Scientist about the recent work by Dr. Colin Jahoda, who presented this material at the 2013 ISHRS meeting, and wanted to write a bit more about it.

The key to his findings was his ability to produce hair by growing dermal papilla cells in a 3D manner. The process starts with the isolation of the dermal papilla cells, then let them grow and multiply so that their numbers increase. These cells are obtained from discarded hair transplant tissue and once put into a nutrient broth, some 30 hours later, each drop of solution contains about 3000 dermal papilla cells. These cells were injected into neonatal foreskin which is known to be hairless, easily available as it is taken from babies who were circumcised. The donor cells comes from between 5-7 patients. After about 6 weeks of growth in a 3D matrix solution there is growth and some hair actually can be seen.

Dr. Jahoda believes that the key to his success was the use of a 3D matrix for growing the dermal papilla. The dermal papilla cells reprogram the skin cells as they grow and these reprogrammed cells form hair follicles. He believes that this will eventually lead to “hair cloning” therapies and the end result, he hopes, will not even require a surgical procedure like hair transplantation. Now that he knows which genes need to be expressed, drugs might even be developed that can reactivate the dermal papilla precursors in the scalp of balding people. Dr. Melanie McDowell from the University of Adelaide in Australia said, “The cool thing about hair follicles is you already have the channel into them, so topical creams have a good chance of getting down into where they’re needed.”

I would expect that this would take years to identify the appropriate drug and then take the process through the FDA. For our audience reading this post, please be patient and give the researchers some room to finish defining the process and finding that “magic cream” they are looking for.

Snippet from the press release —

Stratus Media Group, Inc. (OTCQB:SMDI) announced today that it was planning to expand its entrance into the biotechnology industry with the execution of a letter of intent between the Company and Histogen, Inc., a regenerative medicine company developing innovative therapies for conditions including hair loss and cancer.

The non-binding letter of intent outlines the primary terms of a merger of San Diego-based Histogen into Stratus, to be renamed Restorgenex Corporation. The letter of intent has been approved by the board of directors of both companies, and the parties are engaged in completing a formal merger agreement.

Read the rest — Stratus Media Group and Histogen Execute Letter of Intent for Biotechnology Merger

We’ve written about Histogen many times in the past. It appears that Stratus Media is getting into biopharmaceuticals lately by also announcing a merger with Canterbury Laboratories, LLC, and Hygeia Therapeutics, Inc last month.

Snippet from the press release:

Histogen, Inc., a regenerative medicine company developing innovative therapies based on the products of cells grown under simulated embryonic conditions, today announced that the United States Patent & Trademark Office has issued patent 8,535,913, entitled “Soluble Composition for Promoting Hair Growth Produced by Hypoxic Culture of Fibroblast Cells”.

The patent, which is the fourth US patent issued to the Company, covers the liquid composition of proteins and cofactors that is secreted by multipotent stem cells through Histogen’s technology process, and the method of administering that composition to stimulate hair growth. Histogen’s Hair Stimulating Complex (HSC), covered by this new patent, is in clinical development as an injectable treatment for male pattern and female diffuse hair loss.

Read the rest — Histogen’s Composition for Hair Growth Receives US Patent

Dear Doc,

I see that aderans is selling off some of their equipment. I suppose this means that they are no longer pursuing hair cloning. In your opinion does this mean that we are unlikely to see hair cloning as a genuine option in the future? Have there been any advances?

I wasn’t sure what you were referring to, but I hunted down this article about Aderans Research Institute having a liquidation auction for all of their equipment and furniture. While interesting, I don’t have any insider information with Aderans and I am not aware of any advancements nor setbacks in hair cloning.

We should watch press releases to see if there is a problem with them, though I do agree that liquidating their lab equipment does seem suspicious. Is it the end of their research? I have no idea. Until we hear further info about it though, all we can do is speculate. Perhaps someone else has some info that they can share with us (and if so, drop us an email)

interested in hair cloning. is anyone doing this now? I know aderans completed phase 3 trials. but I was wondering if anyone outside united states is already doing this successfully of course.

thanks

There are no proven cases where hair cloning has been performed successfully as a clinical treatment.

Snippet from the article:

In the world of TV soap operas, it’s a familiar storyline. A brilliant but troublesome character who was written out of the script years ago makes an unexpected comeback, sending ripples of excitement through the community but also reopening old wounds. That, in essence, is what happened in stem cell research this week, with the return of a technique called therapeutic cloning. What comes next should make for compelling viewing.

A few years ago, therapeutic cloning looked like the future of medicine. It promised to realise the dream of repairing damaged tissues and organs using a patient’s own cells. But it also had a dark side: producing its supply of stem cells required the creation of human embryos which were later destroyed.

Read the rest in New Scientist — Stem cells: Back to the future

So maybe this means that within our horizon, we will be able to create hair cells from our donor area with cloning instead of transplanting the hair itself. Of course, this is theory right now and there is much to be worked out… but perhaps this points the map for the work we have to do.

From the same issue of New Scientist, I read another article about stem cells, more specifically about human stem cells created using the Dolly cloning technique:

“The idea is to take a cell from a patient – from skin, for example – and fuse it with a human egg cell emptied of its own chromosomes. The fused cell behaves like an embryo and generates hESCs [human embryonic stem cells]. In theory, these cells can be turned into whatever tissue the patient needs.”

Hair could be a target for this just as the heart, kidney, or liver can be. I am aware of an effort that was made in the 1990s where hair cells were reproduced and injected into hairless mice. These hair cells grew in the Petri dish, but when injected into mice, they grew wild and in all directions, causing infection that killed all of the mice. Not so easy, huh!