Yes, if you have the patience to read, this thread on IESON, used by spatolatorefolle to organize the group buy for the fake lotion, contains a lot of research and debates about the price:
http://www.ieson.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=70401
The key fact is that the price goes down a lot if who buys is a society or a pharmaceutical company. Private sales are intended for personal and experimental uses, so highly taxed and price goes up a lot.
Brotzu, if I remember well, used Chinese suppliers for S-Equol, but for DGLA he had plenty since he worked in a hospital for his entire career. However in the patent the suppliers are specified and they are quite cheap. In the thread spoke also beps63 / Giuseppe Brotzu to clarify the suppliers used and the general prices.
Also, in a post on the private FB group, as we always remember periodically, he personally said that he really expects that the lotion will cost "well below 100€ per month". I'm not saying that, though, unfortunately pharma companies are like sharks when it comes to sales and marketings, so we can't know until it's out.
Yeah, the original formula used to treat diabetic patients contained only PGE1 incapsulated in liposomes, but some time after, I think around the time they switched PGE1 with DGLA, they added the equol and patented the DGLA+Equol lotion as a cosmetic. Only then the pharma companies became interested, and FIDIA was the first to buy the patent, but they added/changed nothing. Everything was developed by Brotzu's equipe.
This is a quite obscure point that still bugs me today because the doctor was elusive.
He said that shortly after a male nurse tried the remedy with PGE1 to stop his male pattern baldness, they found out it was somewhat effective, hence the idea to create a lotion. It seems he tested it on some volunteers, who said they were his friends and stuff, but he never showed any photos. He said he had to ask the permission and said also they didn't scientifically document those first trials because at that time they had zero experience with this dermatology stuff like pull test, scalp biopsies, trichograms (...). Then FIDIA acwuired all the rights and I guess they blocked every possible leakage. It's rational to think they acquired the rights on everything that was not published at that time.
In another interview, Brotzu said "at the beginning, we tried the lotion on something like 100 AGAs".
In this interview (
https://www.google.it/amp/s/www.calvizie.net/intervista-al-prof-brotzu-un-di-cagliari/amp/ ) he says that they experimented with PGE1 but they chose to not consider those results for scientific fairness. Also, in another question below, he says "yes, a photograpgical documentation does exist, but now we are conducting a better organized experimentation and studies and we are still going".
However, if I remember well, recently the son told to Clockwise (or was another user?) that the only photos on Androgenetic Alopecia they had were his and all the other documents were kept by Fidia. Maybe this includes the first experimentations too ?
Well, it's correct but remember that Minoxidil ways of action are not fully understood yet, aside from vasodilation it was studied that it promoted Anagen phase on the target organs (but I'm too lazy to provide the link) and the stuff of the opening of Potassium channels (...).
But what I mean is, as I always remember since I've re-read InBeforeTheCure's post, that Minoxidil and PGE1 work on the same pathways! Even he said that it is possible to surpass the big 3 on efficacy basing on the premises. His post:
Well, this however confirms your point - it's possible that we could have Minoxidil benefits even on people who lack the sulphotransferase enzyme, unless we discover that people could lack the enzyme that converts DGLA to PGE1 too; however, DGLA has in common a lot of qualities with his biochemical successor, so not having PGE1 could not even be a problem.
This is pseudo-broscience obviously.
Me too, I am not expecting dramatic regrowth because recovering 2 NWs is very hard to believe. Even 1 Norwood grade, if "dense", is a lot of hair, for NW3 I saw on BelliCapelli an interesting and skilled surgeon in Spain named De Freitas (who is really amazing I admit) who does miracles on quite-low-NWs but he uses a lot of Follicular Units, something like 3000 for a dense pack for a NW3. We also know that even the most dense transplant differs from original density by a fair amount of hair - even if I don't remember exactly how much. It seems really hard to believe that the combination of a fatty acid and a plant estrogen does miracles so big.
This, unfortunately, seems confirmed, I repeat, by the current state of G.brotzu's hair who was saying he recovered 2 NWs but people close to him said that he is still bald. Now, I repeat, I didn't see his hairs personally nor in photos, but people close to him do not see any changes in his hair. I think 2 NWs could really be noticeable by anyone, unless he keeps shaving or he recovered a Norwood "outline" with only peach fuzz or vellus hair. And this is my biggest fear: I agree this is for sure not a scam, but it could be a dud in the sense that maybe Brotzu and his crew, since at the beginning they were not accompanied by dermatologists nor even "schooled" on the Alopecia theme, got exalted by a bunch of vellus of regrowth. Re-gaining one or two DENSE NWs of regrowth could only mean that we found the highway to the "functional cure".
In the maintenance aspect, we can't even say that if we see dramatic regrowth at SITRI's we could expect it, because Minoxidil is generally regarded as more powerful than finasteride, but the last is the only able to maintain results over time. And since the study is only 6 months long (given the abstract) I think we'll have to find out it by ourselves, with all the paranoia that will come with being unsure if you're holding or not during the months (
).
But hey, that's what the first users of finasteride had to do too. Merck' s studies were not 10 years follow-ups.
However I think the possibilities are there; the user I mentioned before, told us also that maintenance should come basing on how good is the Equol to keep DHT at bay. It's not that bad, but speaking about circulating DHT, it's nowhere near finasteride. However we want to block it only on the hair follicles and that's where liposomes come in our help. Also, we should not forget the double front of action of S-Equol: it acts also as good agonist on the estrogen receptor beta, so he has also "estrogen powers" to help us.
I mean, there are a lot of good premises, but we'll find out something only at the congress. The exciting thing is that Brotzu will talk for 30 minutes and I assume he will do just a brief revision on the mechanisms of action, since he explained them in 2 presentations at 2016 SITRI. I think the majority of those 30 mins will be about presenting FIDIA's studies.
Since he doesn't know, as he said to me in the email of last week, the release date, I highly doubt that FIDIA's masters will tell him the date the day before the presentation. In this regard, I was surfing yesterday evening the FIDIA's website and usually they make a post after the presentations. The most recent one is really similar to what's happening with Brotzu:
https://www.fidiapharma.com/en/news...-patients-with-papillary-bladder-cancer,3,138
They even committed the presentation of THEIR study to an external professor, just like with Brotzu! So I'm expecting news from them some time after the congress.