Category: Hair Cloning

I wanted to know if there have been additional advancements in somatic (adult) stem cell hair restoration, aside from the constantly echoed article from 2004 regarding Stem cell Hair Growth by the U. of PA.

“It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it,” US President George W. Bush said of the research that involves tiny human embryos.

Hair cloning may not involve human embryos and it likely will not have any moral boundaries, but from my understanding it has not progressed to a point where you will directly benefit from it. All attempts to push human hair stem cells to invoke a new hair are inconsistent. I hear yields in the 10% range for successful hair product this way, which is much better than the 1% of olden days, but a long way for a replicable process.

I read an article in the LA Times dated April 17, 2006, about the haircloning process. In your opinion, when will the hair cloning process be available to the public. Are you involved in the research of the hair cloning process?

Thank you for your time and consideration.

Almost every day, I get some form of this question. Sometimes they get posted here, sometimes I just reply with a link to the Hair Cloning category. The idea that hair cloning is around the corner has no basis, yet the rumor persists. I do not believe that we will see anything for a good 5 + years, maybe 10 years or something between. I stay right up front in this process and stay in touch with everyone doing the various types of research. This is not a recreational activity for a good solid researcher.

I recently read an article about doctors implanting bladders into people grown from small biopsies of the owners own bladder. My knowledge is limited, but this sounds similiar to what Hair Multiplication doctors are trying to do (or are arleady doing according to Intercytex). Perhaps this offers hope that hair cloning may be a reality in the near future, and by near I mean within the next decade or so. Also, I tend to agree with the blogger who argued, in an unnecessarily distasteful manner, that HM wouldn’t take the same FDA approval process as a new drug would. Perhaps this bladder story is evidence of this. Of course, bladders are of more medical importance than hair, but I doubt they had to spend several years going through an approval process and I think the situation would be similar with HM. What do you think? Also, I say this everytime I post because I mean it, You are amazing for doing this blog. This is easily the most helpful hair loss site on the internet.

Yes, hair cloning and multiplication may be possible, but not as soon as some people want or expect. I say, the sooner the better for all of us. There are many private investors out there who pump a great amount of money for such hair research. Thank you for your interesting insights.

Most people in the know believe that Drs Walter Unger and Jerry Cooley have stood at the doorstep for the emerging arena of hair regeneration. They have both spoken at various medical meetings on the subjects of hair regeneration and hair cloning and they have been kind enough to comment on the history and status of the field. Included are comments on the company Intercytex from England, the company which has generated a great deal of hype and excitement in the field today, the company I have previously commented on in various postings.

The following segment is written by Walter Unger, M.D.

Having been a consultant for various medical investigations over the years, I know that companies can misrepresent, in a variety of ways, the results of studies and your collaboration with them. We therefore shouldn’t think of the company’s promotional statements as necessarily scientific or formulated/agreed to by the medical consultants that are working with them. Some doctors also use exaggerations in their own promotional material so we probably shouldn’t be too harsh about a company’s promotional zeal.

To put in perspective the results of this company and others it may be worthwhile to remember: when I was doing the cell therapy studies, we could successfully grow the hair follicle cells that we were interested in, in 100% of the cases, growing millions of cells from a single cell with no problem at all. We also could successfully transfer those cells into athymic mice and in almost 100% instances, grow hair on the mice. I was very excited when we got to that stage because I thought for sure we could use the same cells in the human donor and grow hair on them if we could grow their hair on the mice. In fact this didn’t happen; we grew hair on 1 of the first 10 patients and 3 of the 13 in the second study. But the numbers of hairs and quality of hair was not nearly as good in the second group as in the first. It was at that point that we ran out of funding as the sponsor took ill and ultimately died from that illness. What I’m trying to say and what I think most investigators in this field will agree with is that it’s a huge step from laboratory studies to actually getting consistent hair growth in a human. There is some missing factor or factors. I’ve concluded that this project will require some luck rather than just knowledge and hence my relative disinterest in doing further studies at this time.

The following segment is written by Jerry Cooley, M.D.

“I have worked with Intercytex for the past five years. Everyone I’ve met from the company seems very reputable and has a sterling reputation; their staff includes almost 50 at this point and they’re very well funded. They have projects going for skin substitutes, soft tissue augmentation, and even renal failure. By the way, I am not a spokesman for Intercytex and have no equity in the company. My role is to offer clinical input for their product development.

A multitude of labs have consistently regenerated hair follicles in animals and there have been a scattering of reports in humans-Colin Jahoda, myself, Aderans, Walter Unger, PheonixBio in Japan, etc. There is a wide gulf between animal research and human experiments at this point in time. But that’s pretty typical for the biotech pipeline. That animal research is making definite and exciting headway, for example in showing that ‘cloned’ hair does cycle, and that multiplications of 100 fold are possible from third passage cultured human Dermal Papilla cultures.

Not being directly involved in running a biotech company, I can only imagine that there is tremendous pressure on these people to generate media coverage for their ventures to keep the public and especially investors interested. You don’t get very far by telling reporters, “I’m not really sure how all this is going to turn out”. Many pioneers in surgical procedures created exuberant publicity for their techniques even before they were perfected, and it often had its unsavory aspects. Nevertheless, that publicity led to greater public interest and ultimately acceptance of follicular unit transplantation and megasessions. Perhaps we will see the same pattern play itself out with cell therapy.