Follica Question

[Ouroboros]

Hey All,

I was reading up about the Follica dermabrasion idea and I ahve a question regarding existing hair. I imagine you must get your head shaved to undergo the procedure; fine; my question is if you already have a good amount of hair; will doing the derabrasion destroy the existing follicles (to be replaced by new ones and more if it works). Do you have to go backwards in order to go forwards? Thanks.

 

[michael barry]

A dermal papilla in the anagen cycle is deeper than what abrasion will reach. "You cannot dermabrate away a hair follicle" is something a hair transplant surgeon once told me, as they are too deep.


The follica method didn't even result in bloody skin, just a "buffed" and "shiny" skin in its wake. They DID depilate, or pull out the growing hairs though three days before they dermabrated the skin. This supposedly would induce a new anagen phase in all the pulled out follicles all at the same time, giving off biochemical signalling in the skin condusive to hair development of new follicles in their experiments.



I dont know if I'd try any of that at home. Its best to wait until they conclude their first round of experiments at least. But at the very least, you'd need to read --closely---their entire patent, all of it, not just the experimental section, to see exactly what they are up to. I also imagine that you would not be advised to sleep on the portion of your head that was abraded for at least 12 dasy until follicle hair germs appeared in the dermis. Especailly during the re-epilithialization period of 9 days. What they are doing is the "least wounding possible" to get the desired result. If an animal out in the wild gets "skinned" somehow on its back (like a skunk or beaver or whatever), this is presumably how its skin regrows and remakes hair after a large wound----like a bite wound from another hairy mammal. We have seen it in experiments with rabbits and mice when researching how wounds heal in mammilian skin. We are hoping the results translate in us---higher eveolved species--with some particular chemical encouragement. In human skin grafted onto an immunodeficient mouses back, it seemingly has worked, thus why they are willing to try in human trials with real people.


I personally am hoping that it can be used back in the donor area after a FUE-style transplant to "rebuff" it with newly thick hair with donor characteristics to be moved up front, making more hair available in transplantation. I dont know if it will work in frontal bald scalp that is thinner and has lost a layer of water and fatty acids due to the male pattern baldness process that well or not-----------------but it SHOULD work in the donor area, and in fact that is the scalp they used in their experiments with the mice.



hope this helps.

 

[Ouroboros]

Thanks for the response Michael, clears up a lot. So far this sounds like the best thing yet...no systemic modifications and is sort of natural (just kick starting a natural mechanism). It's odd but if this worked in all regions of the scalp; I would feel much better about getting this procedure done to my whole head rather than getting transplants. Its probably because I'm obsessed with personal power and the idea of transplants just seems like cheating or something; where with this follica idea I can just imagine that the same thing could have happened to me if I was a gladiator back in the old days or something (sword slash to the head and um....landed in a pool of appropriate chemical's

Your post makes me want to ask another question though; regarding this:

"They DID depilate, or pull out the growing hairs though three days before they dermabrated the skin. This supposedly would induce a new anagen phase in all the pulled out follicles all at the same time, giving off biochemical signalling in the skin condusive to hair development of new follicles in their experiments."

I always heard if you got your hair ripped out (like follicle and all), its goodbye to that hair forever? The statement you made seems to counter this....I think i might know what the deal is, but can you please clarify this? Thank you.

 

[michael barry]

plucking out hair over and over will thin it out, no doubt. I seen a man in the hairsite forum on the transplant page with awful transplants back from the eighties with formerly 8-10 hair plugs that he had thinned out to 2-3 hair plugs by constantly plucking them when they regrew. The stem cells flow from teh arrector pilli muscle and the rootsheaths in the hair follicle to signal a beginning of a new anagen phase. These things can definitely be damaged with repeated pulling the hair out, especially if the entire dermal papilla comes out. Women who pluck their brows find that they often thin them irreversibly over years.


My worry with follica is that it will not work in male pattern baldness skin up front very well. Bald skin on bald men is different from the skin that bears hair in the donor area. Its thinner and has lost a water layer and has lost alot of fatty acids. I dont know what kind of hairs can be generated in that environment in this way. Follica's testing used donor skin left over from a transplant, so in effect it was donor area skin. They have not proven they can cause de noveau hairgrowth in recipient area skin. I hope they can-------------------but we KNOW they can in the back.



Hell, I'd rather not get an expensive suregery for my temples either.




What they appear to do in experiments (dont try this at home) is this:
They depilate the skin by either plucking or with NAIR (they actually used NAIR in one experimental example)

3 days later they dermabrate the skin, removing the epidermal layer with a felt-wheeled, high speed instrument. It leaves the skin pink and shiny.

For nine days, the block epidermal growth factor receptors in the skin with a very expensive drug. One of the drugs they mention is $2000 for 30 pills. I dont know if its taken twice a day either.


They also block wnt-signalling in the area by application of DKK-1. Other things will block wnt, but they also all inhibit angiogenesis (Ive checked, they are quercitin, reservatrol, ecgc), and you'd definitely want angiogenesis happening during this process----so they are probably no-no's. This may or may not be necessary in human skin that is pigmented. The wnt is blocked in mice to produce pigmented hairs in them instead of white hairs.

At day 10, they may or MAY NOT ask one to use a topical lithium agent. Its mentioned in one of the embodiments of the patent. They may or MAY NOT use wnt-protiens for the same reason. I doubt they would use both, as their would be no point. Wnt-7 was mentioned in the patent. I imagine these will be used until hair germ detection which would probably be about 10 days or so of it.

At day 11, two days after the nine-day re-epilithialization period in the abraded skin area, they will add fiberblast growth factor, minoxidil, and possibly an agent that ups beta catenin signalling in the skin.


After hairs are breaking to the surface of the skin, I imagine people will be able to get off all this stuff.



NOTE: During the duration of the time between abrasion and hair germ detection, they will probably ask someone to be on some kind of anti-androgen. They mention flutamide, cytoperone acetate and a few others in the patent. Finastertide is what they would most likely ask a man to be on for about 20 days or so, as it would be the easiest.

NOTE 2: any kind of wound-healing ointment, or shampoo ingredient (if they even want you to shampoo) like tea tree oil would probably be a no-no. They are trying to control what the epilithial cells do during the period after wounding. They come out and state that no bandages can be used, and I assume they will not want you to sleep on the abraded area at all. They are trying to "coax" the direction of the stem cells during the healing process in regards to which things they are doing. They want the stem cells to think, "Ive got to heal this skin naturally, so I'll build a hair follicle first, which is the command center in skin signalling" (your whole body is covered in little vellus hairs that are barely visible except for hands and feet--that direct the rejuvination of your skin).



I honestly think they will know whether or not this works in bald scalp by the end of the summer. All theyve got to do is try it on a couple of guys, and they have recruited for trials. But I reallly, really, really expect it to work in donor area-skin, so perhaps a man could PRE-EMPTIVELY thicken his donor area and make it very thick hair, so he has more to transplant later---get it? A de facto hair multiplication. Most men would only need about 10,000 individual extra hairs up front to really make something like a transplant be worthwhile. It could be an effective solution to baldness if not a super-elegant one.



We will see,............................but I will say this: If this doesnt work, and intercytex doesnt have much luck in their phase 2 trials over the next year, then it really may be a good 10 years before humanity has much luck with male pattern baldness-baldness from the hair restoration front beyond traditional transplantation. Body hair transplants just are not effective (Ive checked) and there is no way to "make more hair" out there on the near term horizon. Gene therapy would be quiet a few years off and it would encounter the same problems in already-bald scalp----the thinner water layer and fatty acid layer, the extra collagenous deposits and reduced capillary presence. Ive even suggested that ICX cull hairs, "clone" or multiply them, and shoot them back into the donor area or another area of the body (thigh) and see if they can grow well enough to be transplanted as whole entire hairs to the frontal scalp instead of mere cells. We know whole hairs can be transplanted to bald scalp, but cellular experiments haven't been as successful (or Aderans would have had HM by now because they have been working on it since 2002 in earnest). I think the frontal scalp skin's condition might be the problem-----but I hope Im wrong.



I think we will know a hell of alot more by the end of the summer. Its kind of put up or shut up time for Aderans and ICX in particular in my opinion. Their investors have to be getting antsy.

 

[Ouroboros]

Very informative post Michael; thanks a lot.

 

[elguapo]

I would still like to see another experiment in which multiple hairs from the frontal scalp, which would otherwise go bald in time, are transplanted to another patch of skin on the body, like the thigh or something. I know, theoretically it shouldn't matter where those hairs are, because as long as they are connected to the blood stream, DHT will eventually kill them. But I agree that the balding scalp skin is so damn thin, it just seems logical that hairs wouldn't grow their. Kind of like corn growing on dry soil. Just won't happen.

I heard that there was such an experiment performed, but with only one hair. Well, maybe it just didn't work with that one hair, but it would work with others. Maybe it was a fluke in the wrong direction.

Either way, I'm looking forward to hearing about both efforts - ICX HM and Follica's new abrasion experiment.

 

[nydheart]

The question is this, if it is possible to get the majority of the information regarding the follica study, is it possible that one of the brains on this site could get us the treatment sooner than 3 years time?

 

[superhl]

Were not these mice genectically programed not to grow hair. If that is true, then growing hair in the temples should not be a problem. I agee with the last post, many on this site appear very knoweldable about this subject. If this is the real deal and it appears it is. Lets do it ourselves. We all know if it has to go through the red tape of the FDA, it could take years.

 

[Ouroboros]

Is there anything we can do to rehydrate/thicken the scalp skin in preparation for this technique? Thanks.

 

[elguapo]

I just thought of this: If the Follica dermabrasion procedure worked on human hairs grafted on the backs of mice... why can't they just graft a patch of donor skin on, say, our thighs or something, and then use that as the de facto hair factory for our bald scalps? Or, sh*t, new thought: we each have our own pet mouse as our "surrogate chia pet"!!=D They wear the patch of our donor skin, and grow new hairs every so often!!! Let the mice go through the pains of sleeping in such and such position, and going through that rigamorole of putting up with wnt inhibitors and lithium solutions!

 

[harold]

I dont know if it will work in frontal bald scalp that is thinner and has lost a layer of water and fatty acids due to the male pattern baldness process that well or not

hey mike - was in one of the studies I was looking at recently I am pretty sure - a mouse study in which it was mentioned that the thinning of the skin as it enters telogen (mice hair sheds and grows i global synchronisation for at least a couple of cycles) was noted as being similar and possibly analogous to the changes noted in the slick bald areas of balding mens scalps. Hope perhaps.
hh