It always boils down to how you define a cure. While I agree there are very promising treatments in the current hair loss pipeline (KX, KY and BAY to name a few), one could argue these aren't cure. Personally, I don't really give a sh*t about how people define these, as long as they are promising and allow us to leapfrog in Androgenetic Alopecia treatment.
Now, I don't want to sound like Ralf Paus's n°1 fanboy but I believe this guy is more knowledgeable than most of us here. This is
his answer to the question about when the cure will be available:
"Whether and when a “cure for baldness” will become available very much depends on how much serious research effort (=funding) is being invested into it; since that has been dismally insufficient, we are in for a long wait – until this situation changes (thereafter, 1-2 decades sound like a reasonable guesstimate)"
Among other interesting quotes:
"I place my main hopes in the “cure for baldness” challenge on good old, well-targeted pharmacology, rather than on cell-based therapy, and certainly not on “hair cloning”. However, well-characterized exosomes (generated from a patient’s own hair cells or blood) could attain therapeutic importance as well – if their effect on human hair growth in general and balding specifically is studied more systematically and in-depth in the right models, at long last."
When talking about Follicum, he also mentioned something that was interesting:
"... am am impressed by their serious, science-driven approach (...). If more companies active in the hair arena today rigorously followed this approach, rather than a primarily marketing-driven one, we would already have much better hair products to choose from."
To sum up:
- One of the pioneering and well-informed doctors in the hair loss research industry thinks the cure is still far away (1-2 decades);
- This is mainly due by the fact that there isn't enough money flowing in the research today;
- Due to the lack of funding, companies are forced to adopt a marketing-driven approach to scientific studies, aiming for short-term "wow results" on cheap models (i.e. mice).
So in the end, it all depends on the money flowing in, it seems. Obvious, isn't it?