Stemson is going to use minipigs in the next stage of their hair cloning research
- Thread starter werefckd
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traditional transplant (relocating follicles) will never be a cure for me. even mathematically is doesn't make sense. It will always be an illusion
The only time a hair transplant is a true "cure" is if you've got genes for minor recession or are only losing hair in the front at a older age (ie 35+). One the crown/mid section starts to go you will never be able to recreate full density with even the most artistically skilled surgeon.
Also, the fact that he isn't recommending finasteride is not exactly a good thing. With such minimal density as it is you'd actually have to be crazy not to protect your investment from even the slightest bit of thinning, because if your donor hair thins even slightly you will look awful.
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Easy answer: If I get all my hairs back and don't lose them again I'm cured. If I already lost a good portion of my hair and get the rest transplanted it's a good treatment, but it won't "cure" my old hair back.
No chance it costs 500k, that would price out almost 99% of the market. The CEO specifically quoted Wayne Rooney spending 40k pounds on his hair transplant as an example of what wealthy people will spend for some hair. I think that's a good idea of pricing for this, probably 50-100k USD when it starts, coming down in the following years to 10-30k~? The cost will also vary similar to how hair transplants costs vary by surgeon now because this procedure is going to depend on the skill of the technician who is placing the hair scaffolds in your head. If it's done poorly you'll have full density but it will still look poor.
Just a random guess but you can't exactly tap into the "multi-billion dollar hair treatment industry" if you price out 99.5% in that segment.
His best candidates look great but even they won't be able to go surfing without looking like there's an octopus attacking their head. A cure for me would allow me to go swimming in sunlight with 0 scalp showing.
Ah, when you say it would be booked by young rich people I thought you meant $500k+ since Tsuji allegedly quoted his to start at around $300k. I think a starting point of $100k would be extremely reasonable for the amount of manual labor involved and what you'd be getting. To get this within the first year do you think "connections" or "status" would be required or would your average joe with $100k would be able to get it without too much difficulty? (Again just asking for your opinion, I know no one knows)
I mean those are still images taken in perfect lighting conditions to show off the results, and we don't even know if they've put product in their hair for the pictures. Show me one of those guys with 0 product on a windy day and you'd probably be very obviously lacking hair/density.
SMP could be a solution here, even tho from what I saw not a single patient would need a SMP.
Everybody has his own expectation of course. We should be thankful that there are so many companies try to solve this problem from different angles and we have several options now and even better ones in the future
one way to get fats for the body
Could be, I could be completely wrong, but if you watch that video they talk about the different market segments of people who need this therapy, and it's not just guys with male pattern baldness. It's burn victims, cancer patients, people with AA as well. Would it be realistic for this company to assume that the market for cancer survivors who were also elite level wealthy was worthy of mentioning?
I dunno, I have a feeling they will be trying to make this as realistic and affordable of a treatment as possible, but will still be priced like a hair-transplant. The average joe probably would just have to book an appointment like anyone else and place a deposit down or something. You have to remember that if successful, this company would be holding a golden goose for as long as their patents exist, which could be decades. No one would ever take finasteride, minoxidil, get a hair transplant, take a topical AA, etc, ever again, they'd just go get a "top up" of new follicles from their local dermatologist/hair clinic to replace thinning areas. The only thing that would probably edge this out of favor was a gene therapy cure that could prevent 100% of hairloss in the first place.
They don't need to price it at an insane price, because the market is huge.
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Imo that's just a generic statement to make the company look better and was him trying to suck up to the guy from Fortunis. But I'm pretty positive right now since they said Allergan would take their potential solution to market or potentially acquire them. That was a missing part of the "vision" for me for a while as I often wondered how they'd get it to people with their small capacity.
I don't think so, these guys are not big pharma tyrants. Their chief technology officer in the video, Cenk Sumen, was working on cancer before this (and might still be), and the co-founder Dr Terskikh is a Stanford academic who refused to drop his research position to get rich off this product.
Of course they all want to make money, but it does seem they chose Fortunis because they seem to care more about making a splash and a legacy for themselves rather then just flipping companies for price multiples. That entire video is basically Fortunis jerking themselves off about their values and mission.
Isn't it more likely Dr. Terskikh just wants to maintain financial stability incase the company flops? Also, their CEO kind of comes off as a typical slick businessman. I could be wrong but I personally don't mind too much even if he is as long as there's a cure. It's just that literally every person/company working on hair loss says it's their mission to help sufferers so...
And yeah, Fortunis is trying really hard to hype themselves up saying they only invest in the best of the best of the best
People in startups don't work for free. He's get a salary from them and if it flops just go get whichever research job he wanted when it was finished.Isn't it more likely Dr. Terskikh just wants to maintain financial stability incase the company flops? Also, their CEO kind of comes off as a typical slick businessman. I could be wrong but I personally don't mind too much even if he is as long as there's a cure. It's just that literally every person/company working on hair loss says it's their mission to help sufferers so...
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And yeah, Fortunis is trying really hard to hype themselves up saying they only invest in the best of the best of the best
He's getting both right now though, wouldn't he? Full salary from being a researcher and full salary from his position at Stemson. Financially it makes perfect sense to maintain his research position. Imo if it really weren't about the money he'd have left it to work full time at Stemson including doing some of the grunt work.
Like if the follicles would be AA proof?
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Yes, like the occipital hair. Does not seem like that. They make the follicles out of a blood draw, dunno if it is possible to make them have the same gene expression as the occipital hair...
Any ideas!?
So to prove to you it wasn't about the money he would have to abandon his lower paying unfinished research at a university lab? I think that's completely backwards imo.