Japanese Firms Team Up To Fight Baldness With Stem Cell Cure

barbara

Pioneer Founding member
John Boyd
7-13-16

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jboyd/2016/07/13/stem-cells-to-make-hair-today-gone-tomorrow-a-thing-of-the-past/#77de0d693cc5

Giant strides to prevent and cure baldness are being made in medical labs around the world. The latest announcement comes from Japan’s largest research organization RIKEN, which has teamed up with two Japanese companies, Kyocera and Organ Technologies, to develop a cure based on regenerative medicine. The companies are targeting 2020 for commercialization.

They are not the only ones going down the regeneration route. Earlier this year, scientists at Sanford-Burham Medical Research Institute in California, for instance, made a similar announcement citing similar methods. Meanwhile, Japan cosmetic maker Shiseido has been working with RepliCel Life and Sciences in Canada to develop their own regenerative process and aims to introduce a treatment as early as 2018 for a fee of 100,00 yen ($1,000).

In Japan some 18 million people suffer from hair loss, while in the United States, it is more than three times that number—men outnumbering females by more than two to one. So depending on the cost and effectiveness of the new treatment, there should be no lack of patients.

The researchers at RIKEN, led by Takashi Tsuji, have already demonstrated they can regenerate body parts including teeth, certain glands and hair follicles in mice in a process known as the primordium method. The magic ingredient employed is stem cells: the remarkable cells that have the ability to change themselves into the different cells composing our various bodily organs.

Hair follicles are the sheaths of cells and tissues that surround the roots of our hair, providing it with nourishment. With the exception of our skin, hair follicles are the only organ we know of that regenerates themselves repeatedly after birth thanks to the work of the stem cells associated with them. Hair will continue to grow out of a follicle for between 3 to 7 years. The follicle then goes into hibernation and sheds the hair. After several months it awakens, and the cycle begins again.

Hormones can impact the cycle, as can the immune system and aging. Until now, if a follicle suffered damage, that was it: no new follicles are produced after birth.

Follicular regenerative medicine, as the new hair restorative method, is called, works by removing a small patch of skin and hair follicles from the patient’s scalp. The stem cells active in the follicles are isolated and extracted and then cultivated to increase their number by many orders of magnitude. These cells are subsequently processed and turned into follicles using Tsuji’s primordium method and then injected or autografted onto the patient’s scalp.

Though effective hair transplants have been around for some years, they are really just a method of moving hair from an area of plenty to one of absence. And they do nothing to stop further shedding. The follicular regenerative method, on the other hand, requires only a tiny amount of skin and a small number of hair follicles and promises continued hair growth.

To make the method work as a commercial business will require high-precision bioengineering skills and devices. Electronics and ceramics maker Kyocera will use its know-how in devices and artificial joints to produce the equipment necessary, and it will work with Organ Technologies in the processing of the cultured stem cells into hair follicles, which will then be returned to the medical institute that provided the original tissue and cells.

From at least the time of the ancient Egyptians, humans have sort to restore hair growth. Methods ranging from the bizarre, such as covering the scalp with animal excrement, to the drinking of dangerous potions made by quacks, and everything in between, have been tried and failed. Now, it seems, baldness is about to become as quaint as snake oil.
 

yorkere

New member
This does sound fanTASTic!

Hope these smart guys are able to pull it off.....

Do you have ANY idea what this thing would be worth...?

All these millions of guys walking around with fringes of hair carefully coifed to try desperately to cover their heads...no more of that..I'm not trying to be funny...to a lot of people, loss of their hair is a shattering event...
 

barbara

Pioneer Founding member
I agree that losing one's hair can be traumatic. I think that it will be extremely profitable as it sounds affordable and that could appeal to the masses.
 
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