Update From The God Himself - Dr. Takashi Tsuji

Ollie

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Dr. Cotsarelis said it would take a ridiculously low amount of money to cure baldness. I want to say it was around ten or twenty million USD.

How can he even say that when we don't even know why we bald other than the general sweeping argument of androgens. You could spend 10 billion on R&D and still not work out the underlying mechanism.
 

H

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I agree, but you don't necessarily need to understand it to cure it. This thread is about a functional cure, but I guarantee Cotsarelis knows far more about the underlying mechanisms than Tsuji does.
Why is he wasting his time with a silly glorified dermaroller and minoxidil then? The cash they would use to try and distribute Follica could be used to research his cure.
 

clarence-forgotpassword

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I agree, but you don't necessarily need to understand it to cure it. This thread is about a functional cure, but I guarantee Cotsarelis knows far more about the underlying mechanisms than Tsuji does.

Yet he acknowledges the difficulty with stuff he knows, such as prostaglandins. In a video from ca. 2018:

Audience question: "And you might say that our understanding about prostaglandins is still in its infancy?"

George Cotsarelis: "Correct."
 

inmyhead

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Dude having hair goes far beyond girls. For those on the forum who are young then yes thats how they view it but the real underpinning thing is that you lose your identity which comes with a whole host of emotions and confidence loss no matter how long youve been married or how much money you have in the bank.

Billionaires just aren't going to pile money into hair loss because 1) they would look f*****g insecure to the whole world - could you honestly imagine Bezos driving billions into hair loss purely because he's upset he lost his hair. And 2) the ROI isn't even measurable so from a finance perspective it is the worst business decision you could probably take.

Whatever, the point is clear - bezos doesn't care...
 

John Difool

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jesus chart nothing has happened since I left these threads so f*****g unbelievable

And what have you done meanwhile? Helping the community by experimenting with cutting-edge drugs on your scalp? I don't reckon so. 99% of the people of hairloss forums spend their time birching and moaning about lack of progress while they even freak out using FDA approved drugs. Gimmeabreak

It's not about what your country can do for you but what can you do for your country
 

John Difool

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pegasus2

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What would you recommend for strongly upregulate the FGF7 and noggin genes (beside extract of pea sprouts :)

Is tofacitinib a good choice to experiment with?

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00403-018-1868-y

SAG upregulates Noggin, and minoxidil and wounding upregulate FGF7. Just slightly wounding .25mm every day just to trigger growth factors, with deeper wounding every few weeks would probably be an improvement, but chronic wounding also increases the risk of cancer.

Edit: I forgot to add, I don't think JAK inhibitors are worth bothering with for Androgenetic Alopecia.
 
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WaccWaccWacc

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Dr. Cotsarelis said it would take a ridiculously low amount of money to cure baldness. I want to say it was around ten or twenty million USD.
I’m very skeptical towards this. To begin with, making that statement would imply he has a general direction on how to do so. Generating 10-20million isn’t that hard to begin with - a lot of twitch streamers generate ~ 1M in donations in a day over some generic “good cause”. Also, the ROI on that would be insane (assuming its marketable in some fashion) to a point that if an investor heard that... he’d probably grab the phone and call immediately. Doesn’t seem plausible to me but perhaps.
 

bigentries

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I’m very skeptical towards this. To begin with, making that statement would imply he has a general direction on how to do so. Generating 10-20million isn’t that hard to begin with - a lot of twitch streamers generate ~ 1M in donations in a day over some generic “good cause”. Also, the ROI on that would be insane (assuming its marketable in some fashion) to a point that if an investor heard that... he’d probably grab the phone and call immediately. Doesn’t seem plausible to me but perhaps.

Tech startups with very high chances of failure are able to get way more than 20 million in funding. A promising hair loss treatment can easily get more than that.

That's why I'm also very skeptical of any company out there. If I knew I had an effective hair loss treatment and evidence to back it up, money is the least of the concerns. I would try to keep the investors to a minimum to maximize the profits
 

Armando Jose

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Kambrira159

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Dr. Cotsarelis said it would take a ridiculously low amount of money to cure baldness. I want to say it was around ten or twenty million USD.

You realise 99% of these guys are f*cking scammers.

Just like the coronavirus vaccine, you have a bunch of lying c**** such as from Oxford university say they have an 80% probability of a chance of a vaccine this year. The government give them 100m of funding. A couple of weeks later it's found out the trials didn't even work on f*cking monkeys. Then you have moderna releasing news (no data) of a trial on 8 people a day before dumping 30m dollars of stocks in the stock market. I could go on.

The pharmaceutical industry is full of f*cking frauds and scammers, just like any other industry.

Hair loss is up there with the worst.You'll keep seeing a bunch of f*****g scammers saying this and that, take funding, they buy their hookers and cars and f*ck off into the sunset. While you're left at home holding your dick with a bald head.
 

John Difool

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Or you can see it the other way around. Some passionate scientists dedicating their lives trying to solve world problems with minimum fundings and grants, having to wh*** out begging for money trying to do their job with little recognition while you have s bunch of angry balding guys sitting at home in front of their laptop bitching and moaning at everything while typing slurs on their keyboard, mistreating their family and wasting their life waiting for someone to do something about it believing those scientists are just a bunch of crooks whose work is not giving them a Jim Morrison head of full hair.
 

RolfLeeBuckler

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https://stemcellsjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/sctm.19-0301

Inspired by HF embryonic development, a 3D organ germ method was proposed for HF bioengineering, consisting in providing a native‐like 3D environment and maximizing EM cell interaction to mimic hair organogenesis.70 Bioengineered follicle germs were shown to develop a correct structure when transplanted into the back skin of nude mice.37, 70 Additionally, two recent studies have achieved growth of mouse hair in vivo after transplantation of in vitro formed structures, either consisting of mouse adult DP and epidermal cells,72 or of mouse iPSCs,73 encapsulated in hydrogel matrices. Different artificial 3D microenvironments composed of silk‐gelatin,60 hyaluronic acid,43 and collagen65 were shown to improve hair germs for hair regenerative medicine. In a similar approach, human HF resembling vellus hair were recreated in vitro from a mixture of DP cells, keratinocytes and melanocytes in a collagen matrix, and named “microfollicles.”76 Presently, researchers are joining efforts to develop more complex structures that can mimic the DP tridimensional morphology while providing a spatiotemporal delivery of molecular cues needed for human hair morphogenesis. Such a combined approach may favor cellular interactions in vitro, hopefully guiding the development and differentiation of both epithelial and mesenchymal counterparts to form a mature HF. To this end, recent work disclosed an interesting approach using a bioactive scaffold based on platelet‐rich plasma that synergistically combines 3D culture environment with natural release of endogenous growth factors.71

Envisioning the large‐scale production of HF germs needed for a clinical setup, different innovative high‐throughput strategies have been conceived, using both mouse and human cells. 3D‐printing technology is currently being used in the hair research field to print 3D molds resembling HF microenvironment. Effective 3D‐printing of skin substitutes with human HFs has been recently reported.36 Additionally, custom‐designed array plates were produced to allow scalable fabrication of inductive DP microtissues.50, 65

Finally, an emerging trend in HF research is the in vitro reconstruction of artificial hair‐bearing skin. Relevantly, Zhang et al were able to generate HFs from cultured mouse DP cells in de novo engineered skin model.67 Also, hair‐bearing human skin constructs were produced using innovative scaffolds that allow the development of properly oriented HFs.36

Despite the above‐mentioned progress in HF bioengineering, the reconstitution of a fully organized and functional human HF resorting to cultured human cells is still missing. A regenerative medicine therapy for human hair loss will only be successfully achieved when HF are formed de novo following implementation of in vitro bioengineered structures into the patient's bald scalp. Importantly, although from a scientific perspective studies have achieved and reported HF regeneration from human cells,36, 76 the caveats are whether (a) there is any mouse contribution in HF neogenesis from human bioengineered structures transplanted into mouse skin, and (b) human bioengineered structures will generate HF that besides growing/cycling also mimetic natural hair type and are responsive to physiological stimuli.

From a clinical perspective, an effective regenerative medicine would provide an autologous cell‐based bioengineered product able to cure hair loss without adverse side effects. Although promising, so far only hematopoietic stem cell‐based therapies have been implemented in the clinics. Moreover, significant limitations may further hamper an operational clinical solution for hair loss. First, bioengineered hair reconstruction will imply large‐scale production of cell‐based structures and the development of xeno‐free and well‐defined culture expansion media for clinical usage. Robust culture systems that allow stem cell expansion while maintaining their intrinsic properties are still missing. Second, even if generation of functional and cycling HF units is achieved, a huge gap still exists until the conception of a clinically relevant bioengineered product that responds to physiological stimuli (eg, neuronal stimuli) and aesthetic context (hair type, density, pigmentation, and orientation). For instance, larger bioengineered DPs could be required to generate thicker hair fibers, as DP size has been reported to impact on hair's diameter.85 Third, the low efficiency of organ induction, together with glitches in HF eruption and/or growth direction, may hinder the establishment of the effective therapy. Finally, from an economic perspective, a cost‐effective cellular expansion and in vitro cell‐based bioengineering for hair loss will be challenging. The establishment of a patient‐customized therapy will necessarily make it highly expensive.

Considering all the above‐mentioned pitfalls that the hair‐cloning premise has faced over the last decades, it is not surprising why hair rejuvenation (by stimulating existing follicles) has become the goal post for treating hair loss.
CONCLUSION
Comprehensive knowledge of HF morphogenesis and cyclic regenerative regulation, together with optimized protocols for HF/stem cells isolation and culturing have boosted the creation of a wide range of bioengineering solutions aiming to cure hair loss. However, future efforts are still needed to bridge such knowledge into an effective translational tissue engineering solution. Importantly, the successful development of in vitro engineered human HFs will certainly suit major biological applications far beyond hair loss cure. The conception of biologically improved skin replacement therapies (whose usage has been limited by the absence of HF), or even their application as a research model for skin drug development or cosmetic products testing, turn the HF bioengineering a knowhow seeker by several medical and pharmaceutical industries.
 
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