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.
