Some bad news on the cloning front

[michael barry]

Intercytex is supposedly finally going to start their phase 2 cloning trials sometime in September (dont hold your breath), but they have announced that they will only be testing 20 men over a ONE CENTIMETER SQUARE PATCH OF SCALP.

This is pathetic in my opinion. Aderans has not even entered phase one tests yet, and have made no announcements as to when they will be doing so. In my opinion that bunch is a LONG way away from releasing a protocol.

In more horrible news from Aderans, two of its lead researchers (and the one researcher with the largest reputation and the most impressive reputation, the "godfather of hair", Dr. Kurt Stenn) are working for a company called Follica now. I do not know whether or not they are both splitting time with Aderans or not but here is Follica's press release :





http://follicabio.com/

BACKGROUND: FOLLICLE BIOLOGY AND ITS ROLE IN SKIN

The follicle is an intricate tissue structure composed of numerous coordinated sub-structures (Figure 1). The cylindrically shaped hair follicle is composed of epithelial cells. The apocrine and sebaceous glands control sweat and sebum (lipid secretion) production respectively. Sebum plays a primary role in skin integrity, microbial defense, and the pathophysiology of acne.

The bulge structure housing the epithelial stem cell niche lies below the sebaceous gland. This population of cells controls the initial development of the follicle along with the different phases of the hair cycle. The “hair bulb†contains the dermal papilla and the pigment-generating melanocytes as well as other cells that modulate the hair growth cycle. The follicle is integrated into the surrounding skin through connections to the microvasculature and the sensory nervous system. The interplay among all of these sub-systems influences almost all aspects of skin biology, from inflammation and immune response to the neuroendocrine system.

FOLLICA'S TARGET INDICATIONS

Follica's primary focus is a novel, pre-publication approach to treating hair loss. As a secondary focus, Follica's platform technology will target the other high potential market opportunities related to the biology of the follicle, namely acne, pigmentation, and body odor.

Team


R. Rox Anderson, M.D., Co-Founder & Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board
Dr. Anderson has been a leading innovator in the medical laser field for over 20 years and several of his 41 issued patents have been developed into products currently used in the clinic. In his capacity as a Professor of Dermatology at Harvard Medical School , Dr. Anderson serves as the Director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Laser Center and the Director of the Wellman Laboratory of Photomedicine. Dr. Anderson is a Board Certified member of the American Board of Dermatology and world renowned thought leader that has published over 160 peer reviewed articles and has been a contributing editor to over 21 textbooks on the medical applications of lasers. Dr. Anderson also has experience advising numerous dermatology companies on how best to translate promising research into clinical products.

George Cotsarelis, M.D., Co-Founder & Scientific Advisory Board Member
A pioneer and foremost expert in epithelial stem cell biology, Dr. Cotsarelis' research led to the isolation and characterization of the expression pattern of stem cells from the bulge region of the follicle. Dr. Cotsarelis is an Associate Professor in the Department of Dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania and has an active clinical practice at the hospital affiliated with the university. He has published over 40 peer reviewed journal articles and has several issued and pending patents based on his scientific discoveries. Dr. Cotsarelis is also an active advisor to dermatology companies developing novel approaches to treating hair loss.

Vera Price, M.D., Co-Founder & Scientific Advisory Board Member
Dr. Vera Price is a Professor in the Department of Dermatology, University of California , San Francisco (UCSF) where she also directs the UCSF Hair Research Center , the Hair and Nail Clinic, and the UCSF Dermatology Faculty Practice. Dr. Price is Founding Chairman of the National Alopecia Areata Foundation and an active participant in other leading alopecia societies. Her research on quantitatively measuring hair growth in patients treated with Propecia (finasteride) and Rogaine (minoxidil), the hormonal regulation of the hair follicle, and immunopathologic and genetic studies in alopecia areata have yielded numerous significant contributions to the field.

Kurt Stenn, M.D., Co-Founder & Scientific Advisory Board Member
Dr. Stenn brings 30 years of expertise in hair follicle biology to the Follica team. After a 20 year distinguished academic career as a Professor of Pathology and Dermatology at the Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Stenn spent 10 years as the Director of Skin Biology at Johnson & Johnson. During his career, he has lectured extensively on the biology of the hair follicle and has over 100 peer review scientific publications to his name. He is currently the Vice President of Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Aderans Research Institute, Inc., where he is pioneering novel approaches to hair transplantation.

Ron Cape PhD, Board Member
Daphne Zohar, Board Member
Stephen Prouty, PhD, Director of Research
David Steinberg, Interim COO
Kevin Pojasek PhD, VP of Strategy



As any of you can see Follica's focus is a "novel, pre-publication (meaning nothing in Scientific journals has been written about it) approach to hairloss. I can assure you this indication would be cellular in nature. They also want to use this art to treat conditions like acne, pigmentation, and body odor and "other conditions related to the hair follicle".

Dr. Stenn's credidentials are enormous in particular: Dr. Stenn brings 30 years of expertise in hair follicle biology to the Follica team. After a 20 year distinguished academic career as a Professor of Pathology and Dermatology at the Yale University School of Medicine, Dr. Stenn spent 10 years as the Director of Skin Biology at Johnson & Johnson. During his career, he has lectured extensively on the biology of the hair follicle and has over 100 peer review scientific publications to his name. He is currently the Vice President of Research and Chief Scientific Officer of Aderans Research Institute, Inc., where he is pioneering novel approaches to hair transplantation. He is also a senior advisor to one large company in the field of cosmetics............I forget which one but I think it was Johnson and Johnson.........so he knows his stuff.



Anyway, back to cloning....................things obviously aren't going that well. In fact I'd read an article by Costarialis and Stenn suggesting that cloning might have to be carried out outside the body in a 3 dimensional matrix and the full grown hair's be put back in the body. I really dont think they are having much luck in trials at Aderans in getting hair to consistently sprout on immuno-deficient mice with human skin grafted on their backs with human follicles.

The fact that human scalp skin is thinned out, aged, and fibriotic will no doubt mean that experiments will go even worse with human scalp skin for that protocol. I wish someone would have tried my ••••••• idea of implanting the stem cells in the fatty areas of the thighs and FUE'd them back out and put them on the head after they had fully formed follicles. I guess that idea just made too much damned horsesense.

Anyway, The Intercytex trials are supposedly going to be starting in the next few months, but one square centimeter of head hair proboably only will create 30 or so follicles if things go well. This does not inspire much confidence. ICX is a cash-strapped company and Dr. Paul Kemp, their president and the foremost tissue-engineering expert on earth (made the world's first organ from stem cells) spends much of his time trying to raise money speaking in conferences. If they do well in the phase two trial at ICX (big "if"), they will no doubt try a larger area.............maybe even a whole square inch. That would be another year............

ICX's prediction that they could perhaps offer cloning "in house" in Manchester England by 2008 looks like wishful thinking by this logic. I would not bet on cloning before 2010, and even that is a bit optomistic. The researchers themselves, whove hairsite.com poster James Bond has spoken with in an interview, dont even "name a date" themselves. They simply have to wait and see how various injection and culturing protocols do in these tiny tests with regards to efficacy, direction, consistency. Safety has been established however, and thats good news.

We also have to worry about the hairs only growing for one cycle and not regenerating. Sort of like genetically modified crop's seeds not being able to produce new produce on their own (they can't), perhaps these induced hairs wont regenerate after the first rest phase after three years or so. Thats also a concern.


2011-2012. My opinion. Hope I'm wrong, and a breakthrough here or there could speed that up

 

[ANDREW_J_I]

mother fuckers, dont they realise the size of the market they would have if they brought this sh*t quicker!!

i bet u they cud bring this out within a few years if they really put some effort in. 20 people. they need more like 500. il f*****g do it, if they wud let me. cud get free hair. lol.

 

[htownballa]

Michael,

Its tough news on the cloning, but what I suspected. Intercytex might be using the hair cloning thing just to get people to invest in them, so they can pursue other endeavors. This sounds likely especially if the head guy needs to hold conferences as fundraisers LOL! On their website, it seems like they have multiple projects not just the cloning, and the cloning isn't even on the top of their list!!!

I'm pretty much writing off intercytex as far as the hair cloning, it just seems like all talk. IMO our best hope lies in getting novel new drugs that work better than Propecia. Dr. Rassman on baldingblog.com says he knows of a few drugs down the "FDA pipeline". Who knows, maybe Follica can contribute to a miracle drug

Anyways, I hope I am sincerely wrong with the cloning thing. I wish it would come out in 2010-2015, but even that might be way too optimistic.

 

[btp11]

i read some of this this morning....its disappointing, but who is surprised?

:kaputt:

 

[Apoc]

Well gentlemen if this is true then we are all F-U-C-K-E-D. Intercytex can go to hell with this crap. Why were they making trials I if now they are going to grow hair on a dime? Someone should throw a molotov into their office if they won't at least try to clone a full head of hair.

Oh well... since there is no other drug on the horizon and my hair won't last another 4-5 years until another drug appears I might as well get used to the razor.

 

[michael barry]

There is only one drug for AA in the FDA pipeline, roxythromicyn. The follica indication would be years away from reality. Anything that converts your skin cells in vitro (in your body) to hair cells would have to be tested in rodents, then apes, then humans VERY CAREFULLY to make sure they didnt 'change' into cancer cells in your body. That is MUCH different than isolating dermal papilla and outer root sheath stem cells outside the body, getting them to multiply in a petri dish, and re-implanting them in your scalp. It would be a hell of a lot more dangerous than that.

On Rassman. He is called Assman over at hairsite for a reason. His "balding blog" is nothing more than a bullshit factory that attempts to get everyone to get a hair transplant after getting on propecia. Thats its fuction. He's terrified of cloning because he would not be "in on it" an dit would pretty much spell the end of hair transplants. That guy made an absolute *** of himself at a ISHRS conference and had to be escorted out while he was trying to claim he "invented" FUE instead of Dr. Woods of Australia. All after a few years of denying it could be done and calling Woods a liar over and over. He realized that enough men were having the surgery and posting pics of the results at hairsite that he could no longer deny it was being done, so he claimed he invented it himself. Thats pathological behavior. Dr. Assman used to be a heart surgeon, and then, seeing the huge money that could be made in tranplants BECAME A MEDICAL DIRECTOR FOR BOSLEY. Seeing that results could easily be better and more money could be made, he went into business with Dr. Bernstien and formed NHI (now Bernstein practices alone). To his credit, Assman disavowed Bosley's extremely dishonest tactics in marketing (promising full heads of hair to NW6 men, and delivering huge donor scars with pluggish results) and actually tried to perform good follicular unit/strip surgeries where the strip was well-closed and the scar as small as possible. He resented and was dragged kicking and screaming into FUE (as its a pain in the butt to perform and time consuiming).

There is yet another incantation to hair transplantion now called donor exchange which Dr. Cole and Dr. Poswal and Dr. Umar will perform. Its VERY VERY expensive, but basically they perform a FUE and stick body hair in the FUE holes in the back of your head (especially from the chest, underam area), thus acutally increasing the amount of hair on the head and putting your best head hair up front. Its the best transplantation can achieve manually, and while the body hair usually isnt as good as head hair, its better than putting nothing back there. Men dont realize what they LOSE when they transplant. We are accustomed to seeing the hair in the back of a man's head be quite thick. Guys with hair transplant's have hair that is mysteriously thin back there if youve seen alot of them in person. I have. The thing about getting surgery is this,....................if you go NW5 or more, you'll have thinnish coverage, and your wreath region will look very thin. Assman, as well as most hair transplant surgeons, wont tell you this. First surgery you have, youre hooked on it.

Until there is cloning, a gene therapy, or they can safely turn skin cells into hair cells (at least ten years away in terms of testing for safety in my opinion), I think the best thing a guy can do is treat it and wait. If he's determined to get surgery and can afford it, Id' suggest the donor exchange method over any other. It would be alot to pay for though. I would not be mislead by the very deciving photos you see on Doctor's sites that show a bald guy with hair up top taken with flash photography, over-the-top shading with directional lighting on the face, no donor area post-surgery pictures (when you see how much he thinned out the back of the head), couvr'e or toppik sprayed hair- "results". Only daylight photos that show the front, sides, top and back should really be considered. Always remember also, many men got plugs and were happy for about ten years, and incredibly sad at 15 and 20 years. You keep losing hair and if you were going to horseshoe....................you still might horseshoe even with the propecia, slowly but surely just as if you were hoping wearing green contacts could turn your eyes green over the years. Genetics dont care.

Trasplants are a numers game. You used to have 100-150 THOUSAND hairs on your head. 2500 FU's with an average of 2-3 hairs per Follicular Unit only put abotu 7000 hairs back up front. After going higher than that the wreath thinning gets really obvious. Guys who get 5-7,000 follicular unit surgeries look whack from behind and if their vertex bald spot opens up they are utterly fucked. I keep that in mind. The wreath typically only contains 40-50,000 hairs, but some men only keep about 25,000-30,000 in old age. Look where they would have been if they'd plugged early. Think about Larry David, Kramer on Sienfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney. Just not enough donor-hair.

 

[Boru]

cloning dangers

Clone yourself a couple sets of sextuplets, wait for 18-28 years, then you might have enough, if one or more of them doesn't develop male pattern baldness, if they will volunteer to give up 50% of their follicles to keep the originator happy (unless they are enslaved) No, seriously folks, cloning is a lottery, unless all gene factors involved in male pattern baldness are identified in all circumstances.
Please explain any flaws in my cartoon for the sake of advancing a clear philosophical approach to cloning. Human evolution is, after all, one great cloning experiment.
Boru

 

[hairhaircomeagain]

So, expecting HM to come out in the next 5 years is foolish. Maybe even in the next 10-15 years...

 

[michael barry]

I think 2011-2012 (what Ive been saying for years personally) is much more realistic. You will see those on sites who claim to have inside information state there will be big announcements in Sept 07' and such tripe. Dont believe it.

If these one centimeter test patch tests go well, 20 more folks will probably half a square inch next year, then perhaps a square inch......................a few incantations later................they may take a stab at filling in an entire bald spot. If they get all that right, they'd submit their applications to whatever oversight board thats in each country. In England and Japan, this appears to be much easier than here. I would look for cloning to be available in England or Japan a few years ahead of America because of the stringency of FDA three-phase trials and the review process that usually takes around a year in itself.


Inctercytex itself claims 2008 in-house is possible, but very few believe that optomism. 2010 in-house in Manchester England would be much more like it, unless these tests go remarkably well, they shoot for a few square inches of coverage in following tests and get similar super results.



However, 10-15 years is so long that I honestly think the funding would dry up by that time (especially 15 years). Other things that turn skin cells in to hair cells, gene treatments, etc. may come along before that much time has passed. ICX and Aderans have to know they are in something of a race. ICX definitely has an early lead though.


My opinon: If there is no cloning by 2015 in phase three trials...............it will never happen as something else will have surpassed it by then.

 

[htownballa]

Hey Mike,

This is a little offtopic, but when you mentioned that doctors put in body hair into the FUEd donor holes, would that be useful in terms of just covering the scar/making the back less thin or would the body hair actually translate into greater donor hair that can be used in future surgeries?

Also, what do you think of roxythromycin- is it the new and better propecia or just another supplement to the arsenal?

 

[2guard]

Hey Mike,

This is a little offtopic, but when you mentioned that doctors put in body hair into the FUEd donor holes, would that be useful in terms of just covering the scar/making the back less thin or would the body hair actually translate into greater donor hair that can be used in future surgeries?

Also, what do you think of roxythromycin- is it the new and better propecia or just another supplement to the arsenal?

I don't know if that could be done or not, but the real question would be why you'd want to do that? It's more expensive to get it done, and you could have just put the hair from the body where you need it in the first place. What's the point of putting it in the back to cover up the thinned out donor if you're just going to move it again later on??

 

[michael barry]

htwnballa (thats a hell of a name) wrote:

This is a little offtopic, but when you mentioned that doctors put in body hair into the FUEd donor holes, would that be useful in terms of just covering the scar/making the back less thin or would the body hair actually translate into greater donor hair that can be used in future surgeries?

Also, what do you think of roxythromycin- is it the new and better propecia or just another supplement to the arsenal?


Roxythromicyn is going to clinical trials.
http://clinicaltrials.gov/show/NCT00197379 You can read about it there. We wont know just how effective until it gets through the trials. The preclincial trials (8 out of 11 responders) is pretty good. It might help out someone doing copper peptides a great deal................or maybe not. Thats complicated stuff. You might email Dr. Peter Proctor and ask him if he thinks it would be helpful. His replies are short, but he's a pretty nice guy, very smart.


On the donor exchange transplant...................it would be terribly expensive. However, Ive seen alot of transplants in person. A guy with "high sides" like Darrel Waltrip http://www.raceworldnc.com/categories/m ... altrip.gif (look at the pic) is usually a good candidate for a hair transplant. Especially a man whose head isnt really wide. A guy like Sean Connery http://www.spotlightcd.com/hallfame/por ... ery_63.jpg at 30 might look like a good candidate, but he is not http://vnexpress.net/Vietnam/Van-hoa/Gu ... onnery.jpg and as you can see would have been fucked if he got plugs when he started to receed.

If youve seen alot of transplants (I have) you notice that the back of a man's head looks thinned-out. Pictures lie man. Docs take pics with overhead shadowing and directional light with flash photography and use concealers like Couvr'e and Toppik on the men's heads after blow drying their hair. Very VERY deceptive in regards to what the same men look like on a sunny day. Daylight and dark. Many men have hair islands and are bald in the back behind a full front. The docs show you pics of men in many cases that have hair..................in front of a massive bald spot. You dont see the bald spot.

Donor exchange at least keeps you from really overharvesting the hair in the back of the head. As far as it being used in the future............if your body hair gets so robust on your head that the FUE surgeon cant tell a difference, you could probably use it up front like this guyhttp://www.hairsite4.com/dc/dcboard. ... 4575&page= Thats all body hair and its the best result Ive seen with it. At 5 bucks a graft, his 3000 plus body hair probably cost him over 15 thousand bucks though................................assuming the propecia he's on keeps him from losing any more hair. Remeber body hair like male hormone and wont grow without it. So that guy cant do spironolactone up there where the body hair is. Propecia is the strongest anti-androgen he needs to be on.

Most people do not have very robust body hair though. Cut a leg hair and an arm hair and a head hair and compare it for yourself. My chest hair is the only body hair I have other than beard whiskers that is as big (bigger in fact) than my head hair. Everything else, including underarm hair is not as large. I wouldnt consider parting with my pubic hair. Hair has been shown conclusively in Korean experiments to lengthen or shorten its growth phase length depending on where its moved to. Most men's body hair will eventually (after a few years) grow long on their scalps. But if its really fine hair...................it will suck. Ive only seen a few BHT sessions that really looked pretty good. The donor exchange is more theoretical for most as the cost of moving 3000 FUE's up to the front and 3000 BHT's to the back would be 25 thousand bucks more than likely.


I think a guy like you is in a posistion to use finas, spironolactone.................and just wait until science can counteract baldness with cloning or something genetic. You young fellas are lucky. Hope you share what you learn here at HairLossTalk.com from Bryan etc. and let other newbies know.

 

[CCS]

I had 900 + 1900 + 1200 = 4000 grafts to the front of my head. My donor area looks plenty thick with the bright bathroom light on it and me looking in two mirrors and parting it when it is 1/4 long. Just an 1/8 of an inch on either side of the scar is still in shock, but it grow back in the last time I had a procedure done. I think i just need 1000 more grafts to the front to get the 60 FU's per cm2 I need at the low hairline I want. So I hope I won't lose any more hair.

I'm bummed that I could not get on propecia or dutasteride years ago. But at least I only made it to NW3 before i started.

Yeah, I feel sorry for NW5 and 6 who are smooth bald. They have to leave the crown bald to get a NW2 in the front. Many docs say this straight out, though bosley never mentions this.

Is there anyone here worried about propecia failing who has less than 4 components to his regimen?

 

[htownballa]

Mike,

Thanks for the well thought out response. BHT is my best bet right now, especially since the future of HM looks bleak at the moment. My body hair on my chest especially, seems the same thickness if not thicker than my scalp hair(and i have a lot of it lol) I'm going to stick to Propecia and Tricomin for now and pray that it thickens up my frontal 1/3 region and stops recession at NW2. Otherwise my only option is transplant which I am loathe to do as a young guy.

I totally agree with what you say on hair transplants however: hair transplants dont give you fullness and thickness and this is evident in direct light or sunlight (which is what most real life conditions are)...Also, shock loss would be a big issue with me getting a transplant unless I am willing to wait until my 30s and 40s so that I'm transplanting into bald areas. I feel kinda shitty right now with the options I have ahead of me Mike. I'm hoping some miracle will emerge while I'm still in my prime so I dont have to go thru the rest of my 20s being "not attractive". It sucks that my generation might be the last to suffer the dreaded male pattern baldness. Anyways, enough rambling - keep posting the good info Mike and keep fighting this f*****g disease.

CCS,

I'm very interested to know more about your hair transplant experience. What density is your hairline and frontal regions right now? Is it see thru in sunlight when dry? Are you now technically an NW2? Did you experience much shock loss?

Thanks

 

[CCS]

i experienced zero shock loss even when she went in between hairs. (better get a good Doctor for that).

In the front inch I have 30 grafts per cm2. Behind that, i have about 35-40. the 35-40 looks thick even in bright light, but if i look close, i can see scalp. My hairs are course, and the typical FU is one hair. So it is dark and thick, but not dense enough when up close. As for the 30, it is see through from 6 feet away, but looks like thin hair, not scalp. It looks like thin hair, not a bunch of individual hairs. I have another 20 per cm2 about to grow up between those. I'm a Norwood 1.5 now. When my hairs grow out, I'll be at 50 per cm2. I plan to drop my hair line and bring in the side more. About 5mm on the sides and corners and 2mm in the center. I'll do two rounds of 30 per cm2, totally 60 per cm2 in the new areas, and totally 1000 more grafts. I'm hoping topicals will grow me at least 5 hairs per cm2 or some 1/2 fuzz would be nice to hide the scalp some.

While I doubt it will be nearly as good as 90+, I think 60 will be very decent. That and I need to thicken in some mildly thin hair on the top front of my head and some of the center. I think my regimen will do that for me. So I need $4400 more dollars. I'll be working 20 hours per week during the year and taking 12 units and work 50-60 in the summers and and maybe take just $2000 in loans before I stop taking more loans and start paying pack some of the non-substidized loans. My goal is to have my hair line 5mm above my eye brows, and my lower temple point just behind and 2.7cm above the outside tip of my eyebrows, with a flat hair line and mildly rounded corners and almost vertical but slightly tipped back temples.

The distanc from the top of my eye brows to the bottom tip of my nose is about 6.7 cm.

No BHT for me. I plan to get laser hair remove instead when I graduate and have money, along with mole remove and freckle removal.

If HM comes out I'll go from 60 to 120 grafts per cm2, or use it to save my hair 15 years from now.

and being in shape and making money are two other things in my control.


yeah, women do want more than just sex and looks, same as men do. But like men, they want this other stuff with people who are sexy and look good, not people who are not. That's life.

Hey, I updated my regimen. Sorry I don't explain everything in there. I will try to add reasons later.

 

[CCS]

dr keene says I have dense donor hair, even though it is only 85-90 fu per cm2. she wants to put my hair line much lower. I was affraid I'd look like a caveman, and insisted on putting it over 1/4 inch higher. Now I want to lower it 2mm and bring the sides in 2/3 as far as she suggested, but not round the corners as much as she said. I think her suggestion would give me a feminine hair line, though I've seen many guys with it and they looked good.

i used to be a NW3.

yeah, my hair is see through in the sun, but the hair does not disapear either. 40 really is the bare minimum, and probably 50. I'm going to do 60 because i don't have the money or donor density for more, and don't know if the Doctor can go thicker, but I think 60 will look thicker than 50, and may be enough to look young. I do not want my back thinning out, but think i can spare another 1000 back there.

Dr Keene even paired up a bunch of my single hairs to make double grafts for me.

My hair is light brown. some say I'm blonde. My hair has a slight wave, so that it looks bad if it is over 2 inches and combed back, or over 3.5 inches and combed to the sides. I have to keep the sides below 1 inch or they look bad. I really like 1.5 inches on top and 1/4 inch on the side and a good fade. My scar is not visible at 1/4 hair.

 

[htownballa]

College,

so u added 5000 grafts to just the front of your head? I'm confused, did Dr. Keene say that was cool? I would love to do the same thing but everyone tells me that it will look unnatural down the road. What is ur plan?

 

[Guest]

what do people who have jobs do after they get their hair transplant? ive seen after pics and while it's healing it looks like all bloody and gross. how can someone go to work like that?

do they have to use concealers to cover it?

 

[CCS]

I added 4000, 1200 of which are still below the surface, and plan to add 1000 more. Dr Keene is very cool with this, and wanted to add a lot more than that. And it is mostly the front two inches of my head.

I told her that i know the risks, and explained to her how I plan to keep from losing more hair, and she agreed.

It only looks unnaturalo if you don't have enough density or you lose more hair later.

hair transplant docs lie to you that you don't want an teenager hair line because they know they can't give you one and they want you to be happy with what they can give you so you think it is a good deal. 50 grafts per cm2 does not look like full density like they say it does, either, even when dry. but it does from 7 feet away, though my trained eye can spot the difference and even women will know something is just not right, at least for a 20 year old. 50 per cm2 looks like a 45 year old's hair or a 50 year old.

Anyway, a low hair line looks good at any age and only jelous people or people trying to build themselves up will say otherwise. it just has to be at least 4 or 4.5cm of forehead. Any lower than that and it can start having a caveman look.

i'll do everything i can within reason to thicken up my hair, but i'm very confident i can keep all my hair that i have.

I took a look at my hair again. though the lowest hairs are Norwood 1.5, the thin hair makes me look high NW2 until the newest grafts grow out. I want to lower it 2mm in the center, but i think i really need 5mm. i just don't know if I have the donor hair or the money to do that, so i will settle for 2mm.

 

[htownballa]

College,

So Dr. Keene was quite confident that your regimen would halt future hairloss for a long time? I mean 5000 grafts in the front of your head sounds like a huge gamble!!!

College, I personally think that having see thru hair when dry even up close sucks! Young guys our age do not have see thru hair. If I were to get a transplant I would make sure the density was high enough in the front so that it would be like a wall. Im not sure if that is wise or even possible though. Did you get your temple angles closed off btw?