How Long Until A "cure" Or Full Reversal Treatment?

[That Guy]

Not so simple. It may very well be easier on mice. You never know for certain until you try. People say this many times, but there are a 100 ways to grow hair on mice almost none of them work on humans.

Except this one uses human cells and was also shown to work on people in 1999. I've been saying on these forums for some time: I'm not sure why it's difficult for people to believe that human hair cells capable of growing hair in other animals will also grow hair in humans: It simply does not make sense to suggest otherwise.

I would indeed say that this means Tsuji does have it "easier" and is probably why they had the balls to aim for a 2020 release. There is no doubt that, so long as the cells can be sufficiently cultured, it will work.

 

[NewUser]

Not so simple. It may very well be easier on mice. You never know for certain until you try. People say this many times, but there are a 100 ways to grow hair on mice almost none of them work on humans. It may look easier on paper, but it may very well prove 10 times harder in reality. Not saying that tsuji won't work, but saying he has it easier from now on is not correct at all imho.

That's right. Christiano has grown hair with jakinibs in human skin... grafted on the backs of mice. The pro Tsuji people here missed that part where Christiano, too, has been working with human cells albeit with xenografts. Many a slip between cup and lip as they say. Human biology is very complex. It would be a world first if anyone can grow cosmetically significant hair in human scalp. Human scalp still attached to a human and not xenografts(Christiano) or human cells injected into mice skin(Tsuji, Christiano, Fuchs, Cotsarelis, Jahoda etc), that is. We want proof they can grow hair for us and in meaningful amounts not peach fuzz or a few wispy hairs. Cotsarelis said a few years ago that treatments are coming, and I think it's a very positive sign.

 

[Jonnyyy]

That's right. Christiano has grown hair with jakinibs in human skin... grafted on the backs of mice. The pro Tsuji people here missed that part where Christiano, too, has been working with human cells albeit with xenografts. Many a slip between cup and lip as they say. Human biology is very complex. It would be a world first if anyone can grow cosmetically significant hair in human scalp. Human scalp still attached to a human and not xenografts(Christiano) or human cells injected into mice skin(Tsuji, Christiano, Fuchs, Cotsarelis, Jahoda etc), that is. We want proof they can grow hair for us and in meaningful amounts not peach fuzz or a few wispy hairs. Cotsarelis said a few years ago that treatments are coming, and I think it's a very positive sign.

Yep treatments are definitely coming, but in 5 years 10 years?

 

[NewUser]

Yep treatments are definitely coming, but in 5 years 10 years?

If we can trust George Cotsarelis' scientific guesstimate, as he stated in 2011, there should be a treatment available within the decade. That means anytime between now and 2020. Note that Cotsarelis had just discovered then, in 2011, that HF stem cells actually exist in normal amounts in balding scalps. He also said, in 2011, that if they could figure out a way to activate stem cells to grow hair, a major hurdle would be cleared in solving baldness. And, lo', just this year there was a discovery made by two scientists at UCLA. They weren't expecting to discover what they did:

We Just Figured out How to Activate Stem Cells to Treat Baldness

I think this is cause to be very hopeful. It is pure, unadulterated and shameless 'cope' for hair loss sufferers.

 

[MrV88]

That's right. Christiano has grown hair with jakinibs in human skin... grafted on the backs of mice. The pro Tsuji people here missed that part where Christiano, too, has been working with human cells albeit with xenografts. Many a slip between cup and lip as they say. Human biology is very complex. It would be a world first if anyone can grow cosmetically significant hair in human scalp. Human scalp still attached to a human and not xenografts(Christiano) or human cells injected into mice skin(Tsuji, Christiano, Fuchs, Cotsarelis, Jahoda etc), that is. We want proof they can grow hair for us and in meaningful amounts not peach fuzz or a few wispy hairs. Cotsarelis said a few years ago that treatments are coming, and I think it's a very positive sign.

There are two possible solutions for this:

A) transplant the mice grown hair into a human scalp and observe if it is possible that they still are alive after several cycled or at all

B)grow hair in human scalp by using the same method.
(This one should be available by 2020)

 

[itsAlright]

If we can trust George Cotsarelis' scientific guesstimate, as he stated in 2011, there should be a treatment available within the decade. That means anytime between now and 2020. Note that Cotsarelis had just discovered then, in 2011, that HF stem cells actually exist in normal amounts in balding scalps. He also said, in 2011, that if they could figure out a way to activate stem cells to grow hair, a major hurdle would be cleared in solving baldness. And, lo', just this year there was a discovery made by two scientists at UCLA. They weren't expecting to discover what they did:

We Just Figured out How to Activate Stem Cells to Treat Baldness

I think this is cause to be very hopeful. It is pure, unadulterated and shameless 'cope' for hair loss sufferers.

I'm not a bio guy, but I can read...

Do I see this article mentions one of the two possible drugs to activate the HF stem cells deals with the JAK/STAT pathway? It seems Dr. Christiano may be onto something.

 

[NewUser]

I'm not a bio guy, but I can read...

Do I see this article mentions one of the two possible drugs to activate the HF stem cells deals with the JAK/STAT pathway? It seems Dr. Christiano may be onto something.

Christiano sold her research for jak-inhibitors to Alcaris last year. That drug will be tested in clinical trials for Alopecia Areata and Androgenetic Alopecia and in both oral and topical forms. A topical form of the drug is expected to prove better for growing hair than the same drug ingested orally. These JAK-inhibitors are but one approach using drugs.

In other developments of just last August, UCLA scientists Heather Christofk and William Lowry discovered two drugs that activate hair follicle stem cells in mice. Both drugs are topical, and RCGD423 activates the JAK-STAT signaling pathway but apparently in a completely different way compared to the jakinibs used by Christiano in her research. Both drugs involve increasing lactate production. Apparently, lactate production is strongly connected to hair follicle stem cell activation and hair cycling. In their initial research, the UCLA scientists blocked lactate production genetically in mice and found that this prevented hair follicle stem cell activation. They found that increasing lactate production genetically in mice accelerated hair follicle stem cell activation and increased the hair cycle. Two drugs were patented as a result of this research.

USC, that other university in Los Angeles, and UCLA's academic and college sports rivals, also made a hair-raising discovery last August. They discovered that a type of immune cell normally associated with inflammation, regulatory T cells or "tregs", also promote hair growth by triggering stem cells in the skin. Apparently HF stem cells can not produce hair if tregs are lacking.

 

[MrV88]

Regarding to Aclaris https://www.aclaristx.com/pipeline the soft JAK for androgenetic alopecia is just in pre clinical, so why is everyone expecting a 2018 release of this? Do you all believe that the aretea treatment would work for us too? Even if they are still phase 2.

 

[InBeforeTheCure]

That's right. Christiano has grown hair with jakinibs in human skin... grafted on the backs of mice. The pro Tsuji people here missed that part where Christiano, too, has been working with human cells albeit with xenografts.

Christiano used JAK inhibitors in human fetal scalp skin to accelerate entry of telogen hair into anagen (same effect as in the mice), not to grow new hair follicles. Apples and oranges.

If we can trust George Cotsarelis' scientific guesstimate, as he stated in 2011, there should be a treatment available within the decade. That means anytime between now and 2020. Note that Cotsarelis had just discovered then, in 2011, that HF stem cells actually exist in normal amounts in balding scalps. He also said, in 2011, that if they could figure out a way to activate stem cells to grow hair, a major hurdle would be cleared in solving baldness. And, lo', just this year there was a discovery made by two scientists at UCLA. They weren't expecting to discover what they did:

We Just Figured out How to Activate Stem Cells to Treat Baldness

"We just figured out..." Bullshit. I could list ten things off the top of my head that can activate HF stem cells and accelerate anagen entry, all discovered before this study. Cotsarelis meant something different here - converting HF stem cells into progenitor cells that can form entire hair follicles (HF stem cells that aren't "primed" can't do that). One marker of these progenitor cells depleted in bald scalp is Lgr5, as the Cotsarelis paper mentions. Read the Lowry paper again and you'll see that they got the same results by increasing lactate production in Lgr5+ cells specifically, which prompts those cells to start building the new anagen hair follicle earlier than they otherwise would. There are tons of ways to do this, but this alone is probably no good for miniaturized hair follicles that have very few of these progenitor cells.

 

[NewUser]

Christiano used JAK inhibitors in human fetal scalp skin to accelerate entry of telogen hair into anagen (same effect as in the mice), not to grow new hair follicles. Apples and oranges.



"We just figured out..." Bullshit. I could list ten things off the top of my head that can activate HF stem cells and accelerate anagen entry, all discovered before this study. Cotsarelis meant something different here - converting HF stem cells into progenitor cells that can form entire hair follicles (HF stem cells that aren't "primed" can't do that). One marker of these progenitor cells depleted in bald scalp is Lgr5, as the Cotsarelis paper mentions. Read the Lowry paper again and you'll see that they got the same results by increasing lactate production in Lgr5+ cells specifically, which prompts those cells to start building the new anagen hair follicle earlier than they otherwise would. There are tons of ways to do this, but this alone is probably no good for miniaturized hair follicles that have very few of these progenitor cells.

Before the UCLA study, no one knew that lactate dehydrogenase activity drives hair follicle stem cell activation. Need HFSC activation to make progenitor cells. Altering lactate production in mice influences hair growth, and two new drugs not yet tested in regulated clinical trials are now patented.

No one said this is a cure. They are still in the basic research end of things, like Tsuji is.

 

[InBeforeTheCure]

 

[H]

Nobody knows the trouble I seen...

 

[NewUser]

Nobody knows the trouble I seen...

Nobody knows until the science is done. Lots of science happening in the skunkworks.

Aimee Flores, primary author of the study, said that using drugs to target HFSC metabolism is a promising approach for treating hair loss.

“Through this study, we gained a lot of interesting insight into new ways to activate stem cells. The idea of using drugs to stimulate hair growth through hair follicle stem cells is very promising given how many millions of people, both men and women, deal with hair loss. I think we’ve only just begun to understand the critical role metabolism plays in hair growth and stem cells in general; I’m looking forward to the potential application of these new findings for hair loss and beyond.”

 

[H]

Nobody knows until the science is done. Lots of science happening in the skunkworks.

Aimee Flores, primary author of the study, said that using drugs to target HFSC metabolism is a promising approach for treating hair loss.

It's a song lol

 

[NewUser]

Christiano used JAK inhibitors in human fetal scalp skin to accelerate entry of telogen hair into anagen (same effect as in the mice), not to grow new hair follicles. Apples and oranges.

No, they said in human hair follicle assays, they were able to show that JAK inhibition with tofacitinib increases the growth rate of anagen hair shafts or skin grafts and organotypic culture assay, and that it "enhances the inductivity of human DP spheres", which was supported by neogenesis assays. But unlike with mice, an experimental system that directly tests human HF regeneration does not exist. Christiano, Higgins et al could not show that HFs were driven from telogen into anagen phase.

 

[InBeforeTheCure]

No, they said in human hair follicle assays, they were able to show that JAK inhibition with tofacitinib increases the growth rate of anagen hair shafts or skin grafts and organotypic culture assay, and that it "enhances the inductivity of human DP spheres", which was supported by neogenesis assays. But unlike with mice, an experimental system that directly tests human HF regeneration does not exist. Christiano, Higgins et al could not show that HFs were driven from telogen into anagen phase.

You referred to the xenografts, not the other experiment where they injected human DPCs and neonatal mouse keratinocytes. In the xenografts, hair growth rate was higher (though maybe not accelerated telogen -> anagen), but that had nothing to do with creating new hair follicles like Tsuji. The other experiment is the same type of thing as what Tsuji is doing, although one of the cell types was neonatal mouse keratinocytes rather than human bulge stem cells.

 

[NewUser]

You referred to the xenografts, not the other experiment where they injected human DPCs and neonatal mouse keratinocytes. In the xenografts, hair growth rate was higher (though maybe not accelerated telogen -> anagen), but that had nothing to do with creating new hair follicles like Tsuji. The other experiment is the same type of thing as what Tsuji is doing, although one of the cell types was neonatal mouse keratinocytes rather than human bulge stem cells.

So you're saying that although Cotsarelis discovered balding scalps contain normal levels of HFSCs, we lack progenitor cells, or Lgr5+ progenitor cells that might be transiently activated by drugs, is that right? Naive stem cells can not produce those specialized cells? What exactly is Cotsarelis looking for wrt activating follicle stem cells?

 

[Chap1]

So since I posted this, back when I first became "semi-active" here, I learned a lot about hair in general. There has been a few new possible "cures" or effective treatments since. Also the big McDonald's fries thing. . . Anyone have anything to add or say here? Any new thoughts?

 

[Dontwannabeabetabob]

So since I posted this, back when I first became "semi-active" here, I learned a lot about hair in general. There has been a few new possible "cures" or effective treatments since. Also the big McDonald's fries thing. . . Anyone have anything to add or say here? Any new thoughts?

Brotzu will cure us all.

 

[PK26]

To me, the “cure” is not dying with a full head of hair in old age. That to me is unrealistic. I have no problem being bald when I’m 60.

To me the “cure” is to wrangle the means to have good enough hair while I’m young and active. And as far as I’m concerned, the remedies available now in some combination can accomplish that.