Boy With Rare Disease Gets Most Of Skin Replaced Through Gene Therapy

[IdealForehead]

Article: Gene Therapy Gives Boy New Skin

Just saw this article and thought it was incredibly cool. Although it doesn't tie directly to hair loss, it certainly connects to the types of technologies we talk about here a lot.

Basically, they used gene therapy to alter a sample of his skin in vitro, then grew a "lawn" of genetically altered skin to graft over 80% of his body to cure his rare skin disease disease.

Truly amazing and one of the most remarkable victories of stem cells I've seen.

People often post: "Why aren't more people researching how stem cells can cure baldness?" Well read that article and maybe you'll understand. It's because they're using the technology to accomplish far more important things.

Anyway rest easy, this sort of technology will trickle down and one day we will be able to just grow new genetically modified scalps with zero androgen sensitivity. Pretty cool concept.

This is the kid whose life they saved:

 

[Jonnyyy]

Article: Gene Therapy Gives Boy New Skin

Just saw this article and thought it was incredibly cool. Although it doesn't tie directly to hair loss, it certainly connects to the types of technologies we talk about here a lot.

Basically, they used gene therapy to alter a sample of his skin in vitro, then grew a "lawn" of genetically altered skin to graft over 80% of his body to cure his rare skin disease disease.

Truly amazing and one of the most remarkable victories of stem cells I've seen.

People often post: "Why aren't more people researching how stem cells can cure baldness?" Well read that article and maybe you'll understand. It's because they're using the technology to accomplish far more important things.

Anyway rest easy, this sort of technology will trickle down and one day we will be able to just grow new genetically modified scalps with zero androgen sensitivity. Pretty cool concept.

This is the kid whose life they saved:

View attachment 69272

I'm sure it's possible today if we wanted to but someone's gotta regulate and make money off it first, glad this little kid was saved due to technology that's awesome.

 

[hellouser]

People often post: "Why aren't more people researching how stem cells can cure baldness?" Well read that article and maybe you'll understand. It's because they're using the technology to accomplish far more important things.

The problem with that response is that it suggests that there's only one or a handful of teams working with stem cells. The reality is that we have quite a number of teams solely dedicated to hair and hair loss that could benefit us without having to go down the logic that everything but hair must be solved first.

If only there wasn't so much red tape around this, we'd be much further along with research AND available treatments.

 

[IdealForehead]

The problem with that response is that it suggests that there's only one or a handful of teams working with stem cells. The reality is that we have quite a number of teams solely dedicated to hair and hair loss that could benefit us without having to go down the logic that everything but hair must be solved first.

If only there wasn't so much red tape around this, we'd be much further along with research AND available treatments.

I'm not saying other things have to be solved first. I'm saying if i was doing a phd in stem cell research i would probably rather dedicate my 4 years to curing a deadly disease like this than curing a cosmetic problem like hair loss. And I'm sure I'm not unique in that.

Also the red tape will always be less in life threatening cases. For example this boy was going to die either way, so there was no real risk to performing gene therapy on his skin. The same does not apply to balding men.

 

[Jonnyyy]

I'm not saying other things have to be solved first. I'm saying if i was doing a phd in stem cell research i would probably rather dedicate my 4 years to curing a deadly disease like this than curing a cosmetic problem like hair loss. And I'm sure I'm not unique in that.

Also the red tape will always be less in life threatening cases. For example this boy was going to die either way, so there was no real risk to performing gene therapy on his skin. The same does not apply to balding men.

The same does not apply to balding men? Lol look up the suicide rates for balding teens, yes it was themselves that did it but it just seems like what we have to do to get people's attention, but even then nobody cares.