Why hasn't there been a hair growth breakthrough in Science?

[Don'tWantToBeBald..]

...Or has there?

It just seems strange to me that they can perform something as complex as heart surgery, heart replacement etc, yet they haven't discovered a regeneration gene to make our hair's grow back nice and thick

Im probably missing some key scientific information here, but that's my original naive thought.

I know we have Propecia and Finasteride, But they aren't the complete product.

Does anyone know if much money gets put into research for it?

 

[Private Ryan]

if you need a heart bypass and hair transplant, which one will you do it first?

 

[Back In Time]

Think about it this way:

Twenty years ago there would have been almost nothing you could do to combat hair loss, other than wear a toupee or get a hair transplant (which would probably look horrible). There was still plenty of people willing to sell you snake oils that didn't work, but there wasn't much else.

Today we have Propecia, Rogaine, etc, that have been proven to help. There is hair multiplication on the horizon, dutasteride is there, and other things.

Whatever drug company comes up with a solution that will regrow all the hair lost in every person...will be very, very rich. I have no doubt there is money being spent, a lot of money, looking for the next big thing to combat or cure hair loss. There is just too much money in it.

 

[Don'tWantToBeBald..]

if you need a heart bypass and hair transplant, which one will you do it first?

Good point, but there would be alot of $ to be made from advanced treatments for hair regeneration.

Think about it this way:

Twenty years ago there would have been almost nothing you could do to combat hair loss, other than wear a toupee or get a hair transplant. There was still plenty of people willing to sell you snake oils that didn't work, but there wasn't much else.

Today we have Propecia, Rogaine, etc, that have been proven to help. There is hair multiplication on the horizon, dutasteride is there, and other things.

Whatever drug company comes up with a solution that will regrow all the hair lost in every person...will be very, very rich. I have no doubt there is money being spent, a lot of money, looking for the next big thing to combat or cure hair loss. There is just too much money in it.

True. We have come quite far, Hopefully they come up with something as comparable to the impact v**** made on that situation.

 

[The Gardener]

Re: Why hasn't there been a hair growth breakthrough in Scie

Why hasn't there been a hair growth breakthrough in Science?

There hasn't been any hair growth breakthroughs because... well, frankly speaking, because it is just way too hard.

They are concentrating on easier things like cancer, HIV, and "undetectable" breast augmentations.

 

[Britannia]

Re: Why hasn't there been a hair growth breakthrough in Scie

[quote="Don'tWantToBeBald..":c89b3]Why hasn't there been a hair growth breakthrough in Science?

There hasn't been any hair growth breakthroughs because... well, frankly speaking, because it is just way too hard.

They are concentrating on easier things like cancer, HIV, and "undetectable" breast augmentations.[/quote:c89b3]

Not to contradict you Gardener, but I believe what really needs addressing here is the financial incentives for Pharmaceutical companies to develop treatments for disorders such as cancer, HIV etc. I have no doubt whatsoever that developing a drug which could effectively be called a "cure" for hairloss could be developed if the time and SERIOUS money was made available to the cause by companies. But this will never happen. The NHS spends, on average, nearly £8000 per annum per lung cancer patient. Now drug companies are nearly falling over themselves to develop better more effective drugs for the treatment of lung cancer - because of the lucrative financial gains that will follow. There are simply no incentives for drug companies to develop hairloss treatments. Look at the sales of Propecia. Look at GSK pulling out of trials for Dutasteride (assumed due to commercial reasons). Merck found out (at their cost) that spending about £500 per annum to treat hairloss was viewed as too expensive by many people. Why would drug companies want to develop a drug to treat hairloss when they could spend their time and money developing treatments they could sell for £8000 per annum?