After several months of surfing HM issues, I have a question. From my (limited) knowledge and understanding of the issue, it seems to me like there's a potentially successful method that's not being investigated.

Assuming these things:

-- Human hair follicles can be successfully cloned/multiplied using raw cells. But the direction (and possibly other factors) cannot yet be adequately controlled.

-- Existing skin-grafting technology seems to be able to grow/multiply raw human skin in usable amounts. (Or am I wrong on this?)

Now, given that . . .

Why can't you use raw skin tissue (New, generated in a lab like a skin graft) as a surface, and use it to grow batches of new hair follicles TO A COMPLETED ADULT STATE? Then these fully-grown hair follicles could be transplanted onto the person's head with nothing more than traditional HT procedures.

So, in effect, I'm asking:
Why can't the medical community grow me a whole big "donor strip" using existing skin grafting methods + existing HM accomplishments?

Sure, half the newly-generated follicles in the skin graft might grow out at odd angles . . . but that's where the traditional HT methods come into play. The surgeon could pick & choose only the most suitable of the new grafts to transplant onto the patient's head. Even if 3/4 of all the new-grown hair follicles end up in the trash, you've still basically got unlimited donor hair if you're willing to throw enough money at it.


So what am I missing? Why isn't this being looked into?

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I love theoretical questions! But let me make sure that I understand your question.

If we could clone/multiply hair follicles, what would be the advantage of growing them in an artificial skin environment vs. enriched media and petri plates?

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They are looking at it. Dr. Cooley is involved with that and is very fascinating.

My reason for suggesting the artificial skin environment is because of the hair growth direction problems we keep hearing about.

Basically, when I read about HM research, I keep reading variations of this: "We can already inject hair-growing cells and get new hairs to grow from them. But right now we still can't control the direction/characteristics of the hairs that we get from those injections."

So . . .

If you just took a "shotgun" approach and grew several times more new follicles (in an aritifical skin sample) than you actually wanted, then wouldn't that cancel out the direction problems?

Once the follicles were fully-developed and growing out of the surface of a chunk of artifical skin, it would be obvious what direction/characteristics each follicle had. So from there, a conventional HT surgeon could pick and choose only the most suitable follicles to use. They could be transplanted onto the patient's head like a normal HT procedure.

Even if 70% of the new hairs are still unsuitable, there's no reason they couldn't just grow 10,000 follicles for every 3000 they actually want to transplant.


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Oh, I see.

There are a few different methods that have been publicized. I think the one that you are referring to only transplants "germination" cells to the scalp and waits to see if it grows.

Two of the methods that I have seen include neogenesis and morphogenic switches.
http://www.aderansresearch.com/pdfs/...pBio_08_05.pdf

Now it seems that the most promising techniques harvest the main contributors, such as dermal papilla and epithelial stem cells, and cultivate them in the lab.

When this method is used, it seems that there is not concern for the direction of hair growth.

What do you think?

I like the idea of cultivating the hairs in media or artificial skin before transplanting them to the patient, rather than injecting cells.
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I like the idea of transplanted grafts.

Particularly for the hairline. I wouldn't be too surprised if even years (decades?) after some form of injectable HM is workable, we might still be getting hairlines created with old-fashioned HT surgery for the best appearance.

Part of the reason I raised this question is because of the technology jump. Every new medical advance sounds do-able in a press release, but so often the "little stuff" takes decades to iron out.

In the HM research, it sometimes seems like the cell cloners are in charge more than the hair people. I 'm glad they're working so hard on it, but I also hope they're not so preoccupied with developing the technology that they miss the forest for the trees. ANYTHING that reliably turns one hair follicle into two would be absolutely life-altering for lots of us balding guys. We don't need it to be developed all the way to a perfect "plug & play" no-scar needle proceedure before they start commercially offering it. Anything that's cosmetically acceptable will change thousands of lives.


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I agree. I think that it will take a while. When they began to study hair, they realized that it is much more complex than was once thought.

I think in the future, hair transplant will be a two step process - obtaining donor hair to multiply and cultivate, then returning the multiplied hairs for transplant in the traditional way.

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