C. HIGGINS (UK) -
DERMAL CONDENSATIONS AND PAPILLAE IN HAIR DEVELOPMENT
17th MEETING OF THE EUROPEAN
HAIR RESEARCH SOCIETY
June 24-26 2016, Tbilisi State University
Tbilisi, Georgia
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First of all I want to express my biggest sympathy and respect towards dr. Higgins. She is veeery nice, intelligent and beautiful woman.
We had very interesting talk. Below I'm posting our interview edited by her.
On what are you working now? What have you achieved? If you have some future plans?
I am working on a range of hair and skin related projects since starting my lab 2 years ago. My lab only has 2 people at the moment but in October we will have 6 people. Some of them are working on pressure ulcers and wound healing. Others are working on a condition called heterotopic ossification where you get bone forming in places it shouldn’t. Others are trying to understand the mechanism of condensation in the skin. In hair development you have dermal cells migrating together and they can double in density to form the condensate. There are many cells in dermis and we want to understand which are going to the condensate. This is important to know as these cells become the dermal papilla in adult hair follicles.
As I know dr. Tsuji is working on the similar technology….
I am not entirely sure what they are working on. With their recent paper they made papilla cells into a condensate by centrifuging them to push the cells together. I want to find out what the signal is in the body that makes condensation occur naturally.
You have mentioned wound healing. Is it similar to Follica?
No, our work on wound healing is not related to hair growth, but my lab works on many skin related projects. We are trying to prevent wounds known as pressure ulcers from developing in the first place. We are also trying to make chronic wounds, which stay opened for several months, to close. We do not want hair to grow in them; we just want them to close. J J
Are you going to have some clinical trial on hair growth?
No, I’m not clinician. Also, I just started my lab 2 years ago. It takes a long time to find something to run to clinical trial. All of the JAK-STAT stuff is in the alopecia areata clinical trial that was part of Angela Christiano’s lab where I was post-doctoral researcher. Now I have my own lab. I have to find something myself and then I maybe would do a trial, but this is many years away.
Do you think that we can have the better treatments for hair loss before the end of this decade?
In the next 4 years would be the end of this decade as it is 2016 now. It takes a long time to find a treatment, and have a clinical trial. If something does come out in the next 4 years it has to be one of the things that is being trialed at the moment. In this short timeframe you are not going to find something new and then trial it, and have it come out as a treatment. But there are many trials; you have got George’s work, Angela’s JAK-STAT work (but that is not trialed for Androgenetic Alopecia-rather it’s for alopecia areata). And there is Allergan’s work with Bimatoprost.
Based on histopathological and ultrastructural studies we have come to learn that perifollicular inflammation is often present in Androgenetic Alopecia. Furthermore in some Androgenetic Alopecia cases fibrosis can be seen which leads to partly or complete destruction of the hair follicle. Do you think that Androgenetic Alopecia at a certain timepoint reflects a irreversible state, in the sense that only the creation of a new hair follicle will do through for instance organ regeneration?
Yeah, with Androgenetic Alopecia you do get to the point of no return where you can’t go back. That’s why it is different from alopecia areata. Even if you lost your hair 50 years ago with alopecia areata you can still reverse it, because the stem cells are still there. In Androgenetic Alopecia you lose the stem cells and without them the only option is to make a new hair.
Can you something about how you see near future of hair loss industry. Is there something on horizon?
Well I think hair cloning is obviously interesting but it is very difficult. We maybe need to find something that recreates the hair cloning effect without surgery.
Is it an injection?
At the moment hair cloning is an injection. You inject dermal papillae cells and they either augment existing follicles or make new follicles. That is what companies like Replicel are doing. They are using dermal sheath cup cells but it’s the same concept. I think the future (but it’s not in 4 years or 5 years away, it’s like in 20 years) is to promote direct conversion of fibroblasts into papillae. But something like this will take decades. We don’t know how to do that yet.
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Unfortunately lightning was very bad so I was literally filming blank screen.
But I've got the slides and I'm uploading it here. You can see the attached file.
DERMAL CONDENSATIONS AND PAPILLAE IN HAIR DEVELOPMENT
17th MEETING OF THE EUROPEAN
HAIR RESEARCH SOCIETY
June 24-26 2016, Tbilisi State University
Tbilisi, Georgia
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First of all I want to express my biggest sympathy and respect towards dr. Higgins. She is veeery nice, intelligent and beautiful woman.
We had very interesting talk. Below I'm posting our interview edited by her.
On what are you working now? What have you achieved? If you have some future plans?
I am working on a range of hair and skin related projects since starting my lab 2 years ago. My lab only has 2 people at the moment but in October we will have 6 people. Some of them are working on pressure ulcers and wound healing. Others are working on a condition called heterotopic ossification where you get bone forming in places it shouldn’t. Others are trying to understand the mechanism of condensation in the skin. In hair development you have dermal cells migrating together and they can double in density to form the condensate. There are many cells in dermis and we want to understand which are going to the condensate. This is important to know as these cells become the dermal papilla in adult hair follicles.
As I know dr. Tsuji is working on the similar technology….
I am not entirely sure what they are working on. With their recent paper they made papilla cells into a condensate by centrifuging them to push the cells together. I want to find out what the signal is in the body that makes condensation occur naturally.
You have mentioned wound healing. Is it similar to Follica?
No, our work on wound healing is not related to hair growth, but my lab works on many skin related projects. We are trying to prevent wounds known as pressure ulcers from developing in the first place. We are also trying to make chronic wounds, which stay opened for several months, to close. We do not want hair to grow in them; we just want them to close. J J
Are you going to have some clinical trial on hair growth?
No, I’m not clinician. Also, I just started my lab 2 years ago. It takes a long time to find something to run to clinical trial. All of the JAK-STAT stuff is in the alopecia areata clinical trial that was part of Angela Christiano’s lab where I was post-doctoral researcher. Now I have my own lab. I have to find something myself and then I maybe would do a trial, but this is many years away.
Do you think that we can have the better treatments for hair loss before the end of this decade?
In the next 4 years would be the end of this decade as it is 2016 now. It takes a long time to find a treatment, and have a clinical trial. If something does come out in the next 4 years it has to be one of the things that is being trialed at the moment. In this short timeframe you are not going to find something new and then trial it, and have it come out as a treatment. But there are many trials; you have got George’s work, Angela’s JAK-STAT work (but that is not trialed for Androgenetic Alopecia-rather it’s for alopecia areata). And there is Allergan’s work with Bimatoprost.
Based on histopathological and ultrastructural studies we have come to learn that perifollicular inflammation is often present in Androgenetic Alopecia. Furthermore in some Androgenetic Alopecia cases fibrosis can be seen which leads to partly or complete destruction of the hair follicle. Do you think that Androgenetic Alopecia at a certain timepoint reflects a irreversible state, in the sense that only the creation of a new hair follicle will do through for instance organ regeneration?
Yeah, with Androgenetic Alopecia you do get to the point of no return where you can’t go back. That’s why it is different from alopecia areata. Even if you lost your hair 50 years ago with alopecia areata you can still reverse it, because the stem cells are still there. In Androgenetic Alopecia you lose the stem cells and without them the only option is to make a new hair.
Can you something about how you see near future of hair loss industry. Is there something on horizon?
Well I think hair cloning is obviously interesting but it is very difficult. We maybe need to find something that recreates the hair cloning effect without surgery.
Is it an injection?
At the moment hair cloning is an injection. You inject dermal papillae cells and they either augment existing follicles or make new follicles. That is what companies like Replicel are doing. They are using dermal sheath cup cells but it’s the same concept. I think the future (but it’s not in 4 years or 5 years away, it’s like in 20 years) is to promote direct conversion of fibroblasts into papillae. But something like this will take decades. We don’t know how to do that yet.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Unfortunately lightning was very bad so I was literally filming blank screen.
But I've got the slides and I'm uploading it here. You can see the attached file.
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