does anyone know if they continue all this research with stem cells and cell cloning, if it will work for cloning of hair? if so how far away is this from reality?

does anyone know if they continue all this research with stem cells and cell cloning, if it will work for cloning of hair? if so how far away is this from reality?

check this out:

http://www.clonemyhair.com

i checked out the site, but i didn't really know what they were saying. there were all this weird jargon. maybe i'm just stupid. Could you tell me what you got out of reading it. thanks.

There is a lot of interest in this area, since it will solve the biggest problem with transplants, the limited amount of donor hair.

Nobody has a definite answer to your question of "how long". Some people say it will be available in 10 years. Others have said they think it will be 5 years. There are some people who think it will be even less than this, and apparantly a few people who have warned there is a possibilty it could take much longer than 10 years. I would say start keeping an eye out. Even though the articles at www.clonemyhair.com are too technical for me to understand, I still check there from time to time. It looks like progress is slowly being made, because there are always new papers listed in the news there. Hopefully at some point all the pieces of the puzzle will be there...

A company who has been working on it, who has said that in two years they should be able to conduct tests, and they expect to make it available in 10 years is www.intercytex.com. Of course, who knows what could happen in the meantime.

Dr. Walter Unger up in Toronto has reportedly made some progress on what is known as "cell therapy". This is not hair cloning, which involves the replication of hair follicles to be able to transplant an unlimited donor supply.

Cell therapy involves, as I am told, the injection of dermal papilla (I think) cells into follicles to regrow hair shafts no longer growing and to reverse miniaturization. This would amount, if clinically applicable, to a surgical cure for baldness.

Dr. Unger began human studies at the University of Toronto earlier this year. He had initially injected DP cells into the human arm to look for side effects, found none, and now has injected DP cells into the scalps of his study patients to see how it works. According to another hair loss site, Unger's assistant says the results have been "excellent". That is probably a very subjective term in the context of science, so I would doubt it means they have reached or know they are capable of reaching their end goal.

Dr. Unger should be updating his website early next year to account for his progress. There has also been some discussion stemming from another researcher who talked to Spencer Kobren that led Kobren to state on his show that new technologies may be forthcoming in the next two years. He was not referring to Dr. Unger.

So there is a lot in the pot, so to speak. Anyone who reads this should be careful not to assume any clinical application is necessarily around the corner, although it is rather encouraging. Personally, I feel an available improvement, be it cell therapy or hair cloning, is five years away. That's my own personal guess, I can't say it's a perfectly educated one because I don't know all the research efforts being made.

I encourage anyone considering a transplant to take all these things into consideration, do your research on these new technologies, and decide for yourself how it will affect or not affect your thinking about having a transplant.

-?er

I really thought I'd get some heat for posting the post above this on an HT site. It was either too boring to follow or maybe people don't think it's that crazy to think something could happen soon.