Intercytex Phase II Trials Prove Hair Cloning Now Possible

One of the more discouraging aspects of Intercytex’s financial struggles is that their results are so promising. We now know that the Phase II clinical study of Intercytex’s pioneering work in hair cloning techologies has been a tremendous success. The study was conducted by Dr Bessam Farjo in Manchester, UK, and involved the removal of dermal papilla cells from a patient, the multiplication of those cells in a lab, and then the re-insertion of those cells on the patient’s scalp. Dermal papilla cells are cells at the base of a hair follicle that help make keratin, the tough, fibrous, insoluble protein out of which hair is made.


In simple language: The scientists are attempting to grow limitless amounts of a patient’s own hair follicles in a lab and then “re-seed” a bald head with them. This overcomes the inherent limitations of even advanced transplantation techniques — which is the limited number of hairs available from a patient’s head to transplant.

On his website, Dr. Farjo summarized the results of this exciting clinical trial. As you can see, the results are very encouraging.

This trial was designed to examine the effect of different DP [dermal papilla] delivery techniques and methods to ensure that the epidermal cells were in the correct state to respond to the signals and produce new hairs.

In this study, subjects were injected 900 times with 1µl aliquots of DP cells in a large area which was photographed at the end of the study. Subjects were also injected in a smaller area, divided into two sections - counts were obtained by shaving and photographing the two small sections of scalp, injecting them multiple times (either 1 injection of 50 µl or 50 injections of 1 µl) with living DP cell suspension and then applying a specialised image analysis system to provide a total hair count. In these small sections, all 19 subjects in the trial were treated using a range of injection and scalp pre-stimulation techniques; the first 6 subjects were injected without stimulation of the scalp. In the remaining 13 subjects the resident hair producing (epithelial) cells were stimulated at the time of delivery of the DP cells in one of the two treatment sites.

13 subjects completed the 48-week trial with 6 subjects lost to follow-up. Of the 13 subjects completing the trial the data showed that:

65% (11/17) of the treated sites in the non-stimulated group responded to the treatment by increasing numbers of hairs of all sizes

71% (12/17) of the treated sites in the non-stimulated group responded to the treatment by increasing numbers of hairs over 30 micron in diameter

78% (7/9) of the treated sites in the stimulated group responded to the treatment by increasing numbers of hairs of all sizes

100% (9/9) of the treated sites in the stimulated group responded to the treatment by increasing numbers of hairs over 30 micron in diameter

The overall take rate (number of hairs produced per 100 injections) in the stimulated areas was

o 40% (n=6) for hairs of all sizes

o 18% (n=6) for hairs over 30 micron in diameter

The larger (900 injection) area photographs have not yet been analysed.

These data are consistent with the interim data reported last September and further confirm the hypothesis that new hair production is improved by pre-stimulation of the scalp, leading to an interaction between the injected cells and the resident hair producing cells.

Hair Growth Pioneer Intercytex Gets Badly Needed Infusion of Cash!

The UK’s Business Weekly is reporting that hair regrowth pioneer Intercytex, which has been losing money hand over fist in recent years, is getting a massive infusion of badly needed cash from pharmaceutical giant Pfizer. Pfizer is pumping an estimated $100 million into its international stem cell development program and increasing its Cambridge staff headcount by around 50%.

The move comes at a desperate time. While Intercytex’s share price profited from the Pfizer announcement with a massive rise percentage-wise, the paper believes “any payment may come too late.” It added that “Intercytex has almost completely run out of cash and is now looking for a buyer, having seen its share price plummet over recent months as poor data has seen key products dropped.”

One of the few companies in the world aggressively pursuing hair cloning technology, therefore, may soon be sold off or shut down.

Aderans, Intercytex and the New Science of Hair Growth and Hair Cloning

The solutions to hair loss are changing rapidly. Plus, some amazing reporting is being done of Aderans Research, Intercytex and the new hair growth technologies. One of the best summaries of the current state of the research — at least that we’ve seen recently — can be found at BestLife.com.

Here are some of the excerpts.

Brandishing a syringe the size of a caulking gun, hair-transplant surgeon James Harris, M.D., injects local anesthetic into the scalp of a male patient, a married financial analyst in his early forties who has asked not to be identified. We’ll call him Scott. For five hours, I’ve been watching Dr. Harris perform a hair transplant called surgically advanced follicular extraction, or SAFE. A follicular unit is a miniature, self-contained hair factory embedded in the skin. Each square centimeter of human scalp contains 80 to 120 follicular units, and each of those has one to four hairs.


Though Scott is sitting upright, his scalp is a gruesome battlefield. Rivulets of blood seep from thousands of BB-size puncture wounds. A trash can is brimming with blood-soaked gauze. But Scott feels nothing. He’s watching CNBC’s financial roundup on a wall-mounted TV while thumbing through e-mails on his BlackBerry, oblivious to the mayhem topside.

Dr. Harris is using a motorized tool he designed himself, in a procedure that, for all its bloodshed, represents the current state-of-the-art in baldness treatment. The instrument has a blunt hollow tube that lets Dr. Harris make incisions less than a millimeter wide, in rapid-fire succession, around clusters of hairs without damaging the underlying follicles. It’s painstaking work. I watched earlier as Dr. Harris donned mantislike headgear (dual loupes with six-fold magnification) and extracted follicular units from a band of hair between Scott’s ears, a region of scalp hair docs call the “horseshoe fringe.” In virtually all men, this fringe is impervious to balding, a vestigial result of genes that dictate how skin forms during fetal development.

By the time he’s through, Dr. Harris will have made 1,045 incisions along the front and top of Scott’s head, enough to accommodate the same number of follicular units removed from his fringe. An assistant counts the extracted follicular units under a microscope, tabulating the number of individual units and the number of hairs protruding from each one. Single-hair units are reserved for the front to create a feathered widow’s peak. “I want to avoid a wall of hair jutting from the forehead,” explains Dr. Harris, citing a common blunder of botched transplants. “SAFE is a lot less traumatic than other transplant procedures, such as a surgery in which a strip of scalp is extracted, because it’s minimally invasive.” Even so, the procedure looks medieval, and it’s hard to believe this gory mélange will have a happy ending.

There is also an interesting point here:

Hair transplants have improved dramatically in the past 10 years, although in the hands of unskilled surgeons, mishaps can occur that leave patients with gruesome doll heads. But transplants remain hamstrung for a more fundamental reason: You can shuffle only so many hairs from fringe to forelock. This is Scott’s fourth surgery, and at this point he’s simply running out of hair. It’s a dwindling game of musical chairs that confounds surgeons and frustrates patients. The average age for undergoing a hair transplant is 40, but hair is doomed long before that. To be precise, its fate is decided in utero, during the tenth week of pregnancy, when the human fetus is the size of a peanut shell. That’s when the fingers and toes take shape and the brain starts to evolve. It’s also when the hair follicles form—roughly 5 million over the entire body. This number is fixed: After exiting the womb, the human body can’t produce a single additional follicle.

That’s why a revolutionary technique known as hair cloning, or hair multiplication, holds so much promise. It changes the game because it gives transplant surgeons an endless supply of follicular units to restore the vanishing manes of their patients. Researchers in a handful of labs around the world have been testing the technique on mice with impressive results. Several start-ups have formed, and these companies are racing to complete successful human clinical trials. It could have a profound effect on the landscape: Male pattern baldness, or androgenetic alopecia, affects 40 million men in America. Although it doesn’t have any known physical downsides, the specter of premature aging and the perception of waning virility and diminished sexual attractiveness can be mentally debilitating and lead to personal, social, and work-related problems, according to Nigel Hunt, Ph.D., an associate professor of applied psychology at the University of Nottingham, in England. In 66 percent of men, hair follicles start to shrink around age 35 (in some men, it starts at age 21), causing hair to thin. By age 50, hair follicles are dying and 85 percent of men have significantly thinning hair. For these men, the cure for balding can’t come soon enough.

The Dawn Of Hair Cloning

The eureka moment for Colin Jahoda, M.D., Ph.D., and Amanda Reynolds, Ph.D.—a husband-and-wife team of biologists at the University of Durham, in England—involved an experiment that also served as a nerdy version of a “Colin Forever” tattoo. Dr. Jahoda removed a hair follicle from his head, put it under a microscope, and snipped off a cluster of dermal papilla cells, which are located in a bulb at the root of the shaft. He then nicked his wife’s forearm with a scalpel and transplanted the cells. A few days later, a thick tuft of dark hair (complete with Dr. Jahoda’s male DNA) emerged. The experiment demonstrated, for the first time, the possibility of growing hair from transplanted dermal papilla cells. It seemed the two had found a new treatment for hair loss. Yet they soon discovered that, once removed from the body, dermal papilla cells quickly lose their ability to make hair if they are not transplanted immediately.

Angela Christiano, Ph.D., a professor of dermatology and genetics and development at the Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, collaborates closely with Dr. Jahoda on hair-related research. “Not long after you remove them, the cells don’t even know they’re dermal papillae anymore,” says Christiano, who is sitting in her office behind a desk piled two feet high with books and papers. “It’s like taking an Etch-a-Sketch and shaking it,” she says. “You erase their identity.”

The Jahoda-Reynolds experiment worked because a clump of hair follicle cells were promptly relocated, which preserved their inductivity, a measure of their capacity to remain uniquely hair cells before devolving into something more generic. While I’m in her office, Christiano calls England and puts Dr. Jahoda on speakerphone. “These cells seem to have an in-built regulatory system,” he explains. “We don’t know how it works. Getting the cells to remain inductive is still the basic challenge.”

Christiano became interested in hair follicle research in 1996, when a common hair disorder called alopecia areata caused patches of her own hair to fall out abruptly (steroid injections have revived it to a formidable whorl of ebony locks). Two years later, she made headlines after announcing she’d pinpointed several specific genes that are responsible for other genetic forms of hair loss—a scientific first. She is now focused almost exclusively on finding new genes for hair loss, as well as using dermal papilla cells to develop new ways of treating it. Scientists are still unclear about precisely what occurs, but they do know that whenever you pluck or shave a hair, molecular compounds in the follicle begin a complex dialogue with surrounding cells. These include dermal papillae, epithelial cells (those lining the wall of the hair shaft), and stem cells in a little-understood region referred to as “the bulge.”

The dermal papillae are encoded with genetic instructions that respond to cues sent from surrounding cells and tissues in the follicle. Once signaled, the dermal papillae begin hatching hair fibers. What Christiano and Dr. Jahoda are trying to figure out is how to trick the cells into growing hair by themselves, without guidance from the rest of the follicle. Doing this would allow scientists to culture, or clone, thousands of dermal papilla cells in the lab that would retain their knack for producing hair. “With current transplant surgery, if you take a thousand follicles from the back of the head and move them to the front, you still only have a thousand,” says Christiano. “With the cloning approach, you could start with a small biopsy of cells and then grow enough of them to repopulate your entire scalp with hair.”

A researcher named Claire Higgins informs us she has just received a fresh dime-size chunk of live scalp donated by a male hair-transplant patient. We join her in a lab, where she is hunched over a steel table, staring into a microscope. With forceps and a long needle, she scrapes dermal papillae from each follicle. I look through the eyepiece. She tells me I’m viewing roughly 3,000 dermal papillae packed into a ball of cells just a fraction of a millimeter wide. They resemble golden tobiko, the flying-fish roe dolloped onto sushi rolls. These cells will end up in an incubator, where they’ll be cultured for at least four weeks and then transplanted into mice to see if they’ll produce hair.

Several factors determine whether this happens. One is the growth medium, the soupy broth fed to the cells to help them thrive. Another is how quickly the cells multiply: As Dr. Jahoda and Reynolds showed, the less time cells spend outside the body, the better they retain their inductivity. A third factor is how the cells are transplanted. Do you inject them? Or position them surgically under the skin? “We’re trying to get into the heads of the dermal papillae and understand why they lose their inductivity,” says Christiano. “Then we’ll do the reverse: Take old cells that have been in culture for many months and bring them back into the fold, coaxing them to grow hair.”

I ask Christiano how she and Dr. Jahoda intend to accomplish this. She smiles, clearly not wanting to tip her hand, and replies, “We have a few ideas. I will say that if we figure it out, a lot of hair-loss sufferers will be very, very happy.” Their research could also inform next-generation baldness cures, genetic fixes that reprogram the cells, much like a software patch, and override the genes responsible for androgenetic alopecia.

According to Beher, the main challenge now lies in hair cloning technologies:

Nude mice are the foot soldiers for the war on balding. These dainty pink-hued rodents have been bred or genetically altered to remain hairless throughout their lives. They can be ordered by the mischief-load from medical suppliers and endure poking and prodding and other unspeakable horrors for the sake of balding men everywhere. In Philadelphia, Ken Washenik, M.D., Ph.D., executive vice president of scientific and medical development for Aderans Research Institute and a clinical assistant professor of dermatology at New York University’s Langone Medical Center, shows me slides of nude mice on his laptop. They have undergone a new type of hair-cloning procedure that Dr. Washenik has been developing for Aderans. The company, which has its headquarters in Tokyo, is the world’s largest manufacturer of wigs. It also owns Bosley, which operates 88 hair-transplant clinics in North America.

When I arrive at Aderans, Dr. Washenik hastily ushers me past several labs, perhaps wary I might glimpse some sort of trade secret, and into an empty conference room. What he does reveal is that his approach to hair cloning (he calls it follicular neogenesis) doesn’t rely solely on dermal papillae. “We are using a two-cell construct, growing not just dermal papillae but also another type of cell from the follicle,” he explains. As the thinking goes, disparate cell types already communicate with one another in the follicle to regenerate hair. Dr. Washenik believes that if he can recreate that environment in the lab, cultured cells won’t get dementia and forget how to make hair. “The different cells in the follicle are smarter than we are,” says Dr. Washenik. “They already know they are supposed to be hairy. In eight days, we grew a ball of hair that never existed before on the back of a mouse.”

Dr. Washenik clicks an image file on his computer: The photo shows what looks like Piglet—but with a sable Mohawk. But there is a caveat: “These were hair cells from a mouse that were injected into a mouse. When researchers injected human cells into a mouse, they didn’t get the same results.” This disappointed Dr. Washenik and other researchers, because unlike other organs, follicles are supposed to be immune privileged: When transplanted across or between species, they’re expected to grow normally, without being rejected or provoking infection. He hopes to have better luck in clinical trials, when he will transplant human cells into humans. Aderans is in the second phase of a human trial, which is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

The company is pouring serious cash (Dr. Washenik won’t say how much) into its hair-cloning effort. Dr. Washenik is also intrigued by other researchers who are pursuing another pathway. They’re cultivating in-vitro microscopic hairs, or “proto-hairs,” as Dr. Washenik dubs them. “These are early follicular structures that you can place in the scalp with the same technology that’s used for a hair transplant,” he says. “The big hurdle so far is getting the cells to multiply to make enough hair. Once we culture them, they sometimes die or de-differentiate.”

But Dr. Washenik remains confident. “The sooner we figure this out, the better,” he says. “So many people are waiting for this technology. I know that with every medical advance, the first one to market becomes the leader, and everyone else plays catch-up.” Like many of the scientists I meet, his passion for a cure is personal. “I started going bald at 25,” he says, tussling his hair to flaunt his 2,200-graft transplant. “While I was working on my Ph.D., I was mixing up homemade minoxidil [the active ingredient in Rogaine] in my lab.”

A few blocks away is a start-up called Follica. One of its cofounders, George Cotsarelis, M.D., is a cutaneous biologist and associate professor of dermatology at the University of Pennsylvania. In 1990, Dr. Cotsarelis was investigating the biological mechanisms of skin regeneration. “I was studying stem cells and found a population of them in the hair follicle, in a strange area called ‘the bulge,’” he tells me when I stop by his office at U. Penn’s School of Medicine. “We didn’t know the function of the area, and we almost blew it off.” From then on, Dr. Cotsarelis started paying more attention to hair follicles. After a series of more recent experiments on mice, he made two important discoveries. First, he found that bulge cells aid in the formation of new hair follicles, suggesting that these cells influence hair growth during embryonic development, when we were bobbing around in the womb. He also learned that, throughout our lives, these same stem cells awaken to mend minor cuts and burns, as well as deeper wounds in the skin. What baffled Dr. Cotsarelis is why, if a healing wound is populated with bulge stem cells, new follicles don’t form. The answer would at least explain why hair doesn’t grow from scars.

Dr. Cotsarelis conducted further studies designed to reveal what kinds of molecular compounds (e.g., hormones and proteins) are present during hair-follicle development in mice embryos and are also present in adult mice. A major one, which he wrote about in a 2007 Nature article, was something called Wnt (pronounced wint), a network of proteins first identified in fruit flies. Curious, Dr. Cotsarelis applied Wnt to small lesions purposely cut into nude mice (such gracious, noble critters). To his shock, follicles formed and sprouted hair. So if a person is bald, the obvious strategy would seem to be to douse his scalp with Wnt and wait for hair to grow. “The problem is that Wnt is involved in a lot of other things, one of which is skin cancer,” says Dr. Cotsarelis. “It’s very tricky business.”

The idea behind Follica is to develop a procedure in which a surgeon would lightly wound the scalp—something akin to microdermabrasion, an antiaging treatment—to disrupt the skin and then apply a compound that would influence hair development in the area. This would trick the cells into reverting to an embryonic state, one in which they are genetically pre-programmed to make hair rather than simply repair skin, as they’re predisposed to do after we’re born. “Just when cells are deciding, ‘Do I make a hair follicle? Or do I make an epidermis?’ we can influence them with a protein to go down a hair-follicle pathway.”

Testing the Science On Humans

My hair started thinning when I was 32. I’m now 40, and my shedding has eased up. Dr. Harris informs me I have plenty left for a follicular unit transplant. But after watching Scott’s procedure, I’m a little freaked out. Yet, all the specialists I speak with urge anyone dealing with hair loss to act fast, because once the hairs are gone, they’re gone for good.

“Absolutely no one concerned about hair loss should wait,” says Dr. Washenik. He started taking Propecia when he was in his thirties (he’s now 50), and he uses Rogaine religiously. He is a big advocate of drug therapies, and readily champions surgical options such as follicular unit grafting. Dr. Washenik examines my scalp and announces, “Rogaine is made for you. You’re not bald; your hairs are just miniaturized.” I’m a chemical-phobe, so I’d rather save my dough and wait for a viable hair-cloning procedure, which many of the experts I talked to claim is less than five years away.

Intercytex, a public company based in London, may be closest to a marketable product, says Jerry Cooley, M.D., a transplant surgeon who has been consulting for the firm since 2001. Nobody directly employed by Intercytex would speak to me for this story. “We do not feel that exposure of our research is helpful,” wrote Jeff Teumer, Intercytex’s director of research, in a curt e-mail. But Dr. Cooley, who works closely with Teumer, tells me that Intercytex scientists have successfully grown large batches of cloned proto-hairs similar to those that other researchers have been struggling to keep alive. What’s more, in animal experiments, the Intercytex team has observed cloned hair follicles growing hair again after the original hairs were plucked. This suggests that their cloned follicles cycle through the entire life span of hair—three phases known as anagen (growth), catagen (transitional), and telogen (resting)—something no other researchers have been able to do.

A key to the team’s success has been growing proto-hairs in a special medium, licensed from a Japanese inventor, which contains cultured skin cells known as keratinocytes. “I’m very excited about this technology,” says Dr. Cooley. “It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.”

Bessam Farjo, M.D., a hair-restoration surgeon contracted by Intercytex to run its ongoing clinical trials, says, “All I can tell you is that we’ve grown a significant number of hairs on animals through this technique.” It sounds encouraging, and Dr. Farjo expects to complete clinical trials this year.

Hair cloning will be pricey initially, so early adopters may be men who are not only wealthy but also desperate because they don’t have enough hair left to do a follicular unit transplant. Cloning could also be ideal for younger men who aren’t good candidates for follicular grafting. “Younger guys aren’t suitable for current surgical techniques because we don’t know how much hair they are going to lose,” says Dr. Farjo. Imagine if the receded hairline of a 25-year-old male were replaced with a follicular unit transplant. If the rest of his hair were to fall out—and going bald at an early age generally means it will—he wouldn’t have enough hair to complete a second or third follicular unit transplant, so he’d end up with a solitary plume sprouting from his forehead. “It would look like unfinished business, which is why we typically avoid working on young guys,” says Dr. Farjo. “But if I know I’ll never run out of hair, thanks to the new cell therapy, I can treat anyone.”

Nobody is sure how the actual cloning process will be implemented. Most surgeons speculate that they’ll use boring tools similar to the existing ones used for harvesting follicular units. The follicular units will be sent to centralized labs, where industrial incubators will mass-produce millions of follicle cells for a relatively low cost. Another question is how will the cloned cells be transplanted? Instead of transplanting follicular units, your surgeon may inject cloned cells into micro-incisions, or he may implant lab-grown hair follicles. It could be fast, clean, and painless. Or it might entail something closer to Dr. Cotsarelis’s method at Follica. At Intercytex, technicians are tinkering with sundry techniques. “We’re experimenting with varying the number of cells in each injection, and whether we have to inject the cells into the skin as it is, or if we have to pre-stimulate the skin,” says Dr. Farjo.

Whatever the outcome, choices will abound. In the future, hair cloning will coexist alongside follicular unit transplants, drug therapies, and emerging technologies still incubating in the labs. For his part, Dr. Harris is also part of a team designing the world’s first follicular extraction robot: It will fully automate the procedure, making it magnitudes faster and less expensive. While Scott, our balding financial analyst, was being prepped for surgery, Dr. Harris took me into his office to show me a photo of the $25 million speed surgeon (the actual machine was locked in a storage closet a few floors above us). At about six feet tall with a fixed base and a mechanical arm with multiple joints, it resembles one of those space-age automatons you might see on a vehicle assembly line at a Toyota plant. Dr. Harris has already tested it on a couple of willing volunteers (with no alarming mishaps) and is preparing to apply for FDA approval under the name Restoration Robotics.

“We think the robot might be able to extract a thousand grafts an hour,” says Dr. Harris. “That’s more than triple what can be done by hand. This will broaden the market so that more people can afford the procedure. There may be a time soon when hair-transplant surgery will be available to everyone.”

Update on Intercytex’s Hair Cloning Clinical Trials

The folks over at HairLossLearningCenter.org had an interesting post recently about Intercytex’s progress in developing a practical hair cloning technology. As they say, Intercytex is already into Phase 2 testing:

Intercytex has been working on hair cloning and multiplication for some time. The hair regeneration process includes an initial 30 minute procedure extracting a small sample of hair follicles containing cells responsible for generating hair growth called derma papilla (DP) cells. These derma papilla (DP) cells are then sent to a lab, separated from the follicle, cultured and cloned which takes approximately 3 weeks. The balding patient then returns to the clinic where they will receive a series of microinjections containing DP cells under local anesthetic. As DP cells come in close proximity with epithelial cells, new hair follicles are produced. New hair growth should become evident in approximately 3 months.

Phase I and Phase II testing have been completed. During Phase I, 5 out of 7 patients received an increase in hair count after the procedure. Phase II was conducted by Coalition member Dr. Bessam Farjo in Manchester. In this trial, two sub-groups were formed with five subjects in the first and nine in the second. Hair counts were obtained from each patient in each test group and were then injected with DP cells using distinct delivery methods. The scalps of one sub-group were stimulated during the delivery, the other was not. The sub-group without stimulation showed a 60% increase in hair count while the sub-group with stimulation showed an 89% increase in hair count. Phase II proves the earlier hypothesis that new hair growth is improved with pre-stimulation of the scalp. During the first quarter of 2009, photographic data will be analyzed on all subjects at one year.

These tests, though promising, don’t conclude the clinical trials. Intercytex is looking to partner with interested parties in order to continue with development. For more information, go to Intercytex’s website at http://www.intercytex.com/icx/products/aesthetic/icxtrc/.

The Pioneering Hair Growth and Hair Treatment Technology of Dr. Gho

Anyone concerned with hair growth, hair cloning, alopecia, hair treatment and so on is probably familiar with the controversial work of Dr. Coen Gho, a Dutch medical doctor and dermatologist who has been a pioneer in efforts to develop practical hair regrowth treatments for male pattern baldness and alopecia.

Dr. Gho’s research has been followed closely by numerous experts in the field of hair transplantation and rejuvenation. He has been criticized, however, for not submitting his research to the rigorous scrutiny of peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Throughout the 1990s, Dr. Gho developed specialized techniques of hair follicle extraction and transplantion. The GHO Clinic was established in 1994 with offices at various places around the world, with head offices in Prague. In 2005, Dr. Gho resigned from the GHO Clinic and launched a new venture, The Hair Science Institute (HSI), located at the World Trade Center in Amsterdam.

According to HSI’s own website, the technology that Dr. Gho has developed — which he terms “HairStemcell Transplantation” (HST) — differs from other types of hair restoration techniques in that it does not redistribute existing hair but “ensures that your own hair generates new hairs in a desired area.”

One of the transplantation techniques Dr. Gho developed - the Follicular Multiplication – was established as a restorative method to treat burn wounds. In the clinical facilities of Hair Science Institute, this method has alleged been improved and is now refined to the advanced and patented technique that is now known as HairStemcell Transplantation. Read more

Hair Loss Treatment Has Arrived with Follicular Cell Implantation

Stem cells and dermal papilla cells have been discovered in hair follicles and some researchers predict research on these follicular cells may lead to successes in treating baldness through hair multiplication (HM), also called Hair Cloning.

Hair Cloning is being developed by two independent companies: ARI (Aderans Research Institute, a Japanese owned company in the USA) and Intercytex, a company in Manchester (UK). Read more

New Hair Loss Treatments: 9 Best Websites for Info on Hair Follicle Cloning

The science of hair follicle cloning — or stem cell treatments for hair loss — is evolving rapidly. Alas, we remain years away from a practical, real-world alternative to current hair transplant techniques, even sophisticated ones that replace hair follicle by follicle. The real goal for most people suffering from hair loss is some sort of hair cloning process… in which a person’s own hair is extracted, then multiplied in a laboratory, and replaced en mass in the area of loss. This is the dream… and it remains elusive.

But for all those researching this potentially revolutionary field, as a treatment or an investment, there are a few good places to start. Here is our Top 10 (Actually, Top 9) List of the best websites about hair follicle cloning or which follow it closely. In no order of rank, they are…

1. Aderans Research Institute: “dedicated to developing state-of-the-art cell engineering solutions for hair loss.”

2. Intercytex: It promotes “an autologous hair regeneration therapy, a suspension of human dermal papilla (DP) cells, for the treatment of male pattern baldness and female diffuse alopecia.”

3.  Follica:  “Developing novel therapies for conditions and disorders of the hair follicle, the epicenter for the development and replenishment of human hair and skin.”

4.  Histogen:  It is marketing “a proprietary liquid formula created by the culturing of newborn fibroblasts in an embryonic-like environment and then harvesting the naturally secreted growth factors, anitoxidants and other synergistic bioproducts that are produced” that, it claims, may have “significant applications” as “an injectable for hair growth.”

5.  Luna Innovations:  It is use “nanomedicine” to stimulate new hair growth.

6.  Hair Science Institute:  Dr. Coen Gho’s clinic that claims a superior method for individual follicle transplantation.

7.  Phoenix Bio:  A Japanese biotech company that “propagates hair papillar cells which are the key element in hair growth and develops therapies that enable the implantation of these cells on patients thus regenerating the ability of the patient’s scalp to produce hair naturally.”

8.  Shisheido Research:  Another Japanese company that is doing research into hair multiplication technologies.

9.  Bernstein Medical Center for Hair Restoration:  An advanced hair transplantation clinic, the Bernstein Center also follows closely developments in hair cloning technologies and is a good source for a
“hands on” reality check on what is realistic at the moment.

Scientists May Have Discovered “Hair Loss Gene” and Hair Growth Stem Cell

Bloomberg News reports on two new studies that may have discovered the genes that put people at risk for hair loss and a stem cell that may actually grow hair.

 

The two studies — one on the genetic basis for hair loss, the other on hair follicle stem cells — were published recently in the journal Nature Genetics. Scientists from London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc, the U.K. and Sweden worked together on the research.

“Early prediction before hair loss starts may lead to some interesting therapies that are more effective than treating late-stage hair loss,” said Tim Spector, a led researcher on the gene study who works at Kings College London’s department of twin research and genetic epidemiology, in a statement.

Spector and his colleagues analyzed the genes of 578 men in Switzerland with early-onset hair-loss, and compared them against those of 547 others who were retaining their hair. They then confirmed their findings against groups from the U.K., Iceland and the Netherlands, studying about 5,000 people in all. Those with hair loss commonly shared the same variations of two genes that together made them seven times more likely to suffer baldness, researchers from Kings College London and GlaxoSmithKline Plc wrote in the journal Nature Genetics.

The research associates the genes with hair loss, though further studies are needed to prove the connection. The genetic variations were also found in women, though the link wasn’t statistically significant and more research is needed, the authors said. The study was partly funded by Glaxo.

In the stem cell study, researchers led by Viljar Jaks of Sweden’s Karolinska Institute examined mouse hair follicles for signs of rapid growth. They found a protein, called Lgr5, on the surface of long-lived, active stem cells in hair cells; the same protein has been identified on stem cells in the intestine, they said in the study.

Cells bearing the Lgr5 marker were capable of maintaining hair follicles for as long as 14 months, the researchers said. In mouse studies, just a few of these cells were able to build an entire hair follicle, they said in the study.

The Swedish scientists identifying the Hair Follicle Stem Cells summarized their research in this way:

In mouse hair follicles, a group of quiescent cells in the bulge is believed to have stem cell activity. Lgr5, a marker of intestinal stem cells, is expressed in actively cycling cells in the bulge and secondary germ of telogen hair follicles and in the lower outer root sheath of anagen hair follicles. Here we show that Lgr5+ cells comprise an actively proliferating and multipotent stem cell population able to give rise to new hair follicles and maintain all cell lineages of the hair follicle over long periods of time. Lgr5+ progeny repopulate other stem cell compartments in the hair follicle, supporting the existence of a stem or progenitor cell hierarchy. By marking Lgr5+ cells during trafficking through the lower outer root sheath, we show that these cells retain stem cell properties and contribute to hair follicle growth during the next anagen. Expression analysis suggests involvement of autocrine Hedgehog signaling in maintaining the Lgr5+ stem cell population.

New Report Says Hair Growth Company Intercytex Seeing Losses Growing

A British newspaper reports that losses at Intercytex Group PLC (AIM: ICX), one of the pioneers in the development of hair regrowth technologies, widened by 8 percent to £6.59 million in the six months to June.

The newspaper added that cash reserves at the company have declined by nearly two-thirds to £6.36 million as it spends heavily on developing products derived from unmodified human cells to restore skin and hair.

The company’s income is almost nil because the products are still at the development stage.
“Intercytex continues to make excellent progress in becoming a significant player in the rapidly expanding field of regenerative medicine,” said Nick Higgins, Intercytex’s chief executive. “During the period, the company continued to achieve its milestones and has broadened the applications of its products under development. With a rich, late-stage pipeline, a marketed product and backing from the US Department of Defense, we are very confident of our future prospects.” Read more

Intercytex Raises Additional $5 Million to Fund More Research into Hair Cloning

The UK-based Intercytex Group, which specializes in regenerative medicine products including hair cloning technologies, recently announced that it has raised $5.5 million (£2.75 million) before expenses through a placing for cash of over 6.5 million new shares.

The new shares, which represent approximately 8.2% of the company’s issued capital prior to the placing, have been placed with existing institutional shareholders at 42 British pence per share. The placing price represents a discount of approximately 10% to the closing middle market price on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM, on September 8. Read more