MrFox

I don’t find them to be reliable on the subject. They are very dismissive and it’s apparent they have not properly researched the topic.

Sorry, but I must disagree. The results from Bloxham's trial are promising. I think Bloxham's work is equally important to any other trial going on. We have hair follicle neogensis in an excised FUT Scar, that would have been seen as a miracle 5 years ago. It is also too early to make a judgment call on how effective the trial has been. I remember a lot of people giving up on the FUE trial at this point as well. I again think we need to check our biases with FUE and FUT. We should be enthusiastic about any research being done and not arbitrarily decide that one deserves more attention than the other, especially this early on in testing.

Will there be wounding in the balding area? Similar to recipient-size wounds?

Yes, and this was expected as well. The original lead researcher, Dr. Longker, said as much in several interviews. This confirms that hypothesis.

Can’t disagree more. We should be trying both, don’t bias the research towards your preference for FUE. There is undoubtedly regrowth now in the FUT trial. It’s also narrow sighted because there are more application for healing of linear scars in regards to injuries to the skin, surgical wounds, burns, etc.

This is getting off-topic for this thread, so this is the last I'll say about it. It's still scar tissue, no? It wouldn't be on top of anything. You would have to excise the entire stretch mark, and all of the scar tissue, and inject verteporfin, it should work similarly to any other healing process with verteporfin as long as all the scar tissue is removed. Now one concern would be that stretch marks form from the skin being too tight, so removing the scar tissue and suturing the edges could cause the same stretching to occur if the same pressure is being applied (i.e. weight gain). I think it needs a lot of testing to figure out how to approach that problem, perhaps a dressing that unloads the pressure on the skin and allows the gap to heal without having to approximate the edges together.

Yes, it would work, you would just need to create a new wound, you could excise the stretch mark (scar tissue) and inject the verteporfin, the same process Dr. Bloxham is doing with old FUT scars in his current study.

It is a shame Dr. Hasson hasn't shown any interest in Verteporfin. It would be great to have another highly-rated surgeon close to the U.S. doing testing, especially with FUE, as the clinic seems to be focused that way now. Seems like they are open to new testing with the Xyon topical formulas, why there is no interest in Verteporfin is confusing. Great result though!

Really promising results. In both the porcine studies and the previous FUE study, it took some time for remodeling. It's a slower process of healing. I don't think we are going to have concrete results until a year or more. Again I think we need to remember these are the first tests, we still need more refining of dosing and administration. Hopefully, both doctors can source more Verteporfin soon and we can have more concurrent studies.

Are you still planning on testing in the recipient area?

That’s not what I said at all. I agree we should continue with the 2nd FUE trial with Dr. Bargouthi and not wait. The only point I was making is that we should not be discouraged by one interview being pushed back.

It hasn't been posted yet by Dr. Bloxham, that being said the initial photos are not going to prove or disprove anything at this point. We need to let the healing process happen, and that is going to take a few months. The point is that there is research being conducted, so it is not as if one interview is going to derail the other trials.

We have the current trial with Dr. Bloxham on FUT, the surgery already happened so it's not like we are not seeing any progress.

So, it's just a phone interview today and @Melvin- Moderator is trying to get him to come on the podcast?

Because you have to remove all of the scar tissue. If it was the exact same size then you would run the risk of some scar tissue remaining.

You would need to remove all of the scar tissue. The wounding opens a window in which Verteporfin can change the healing trajectory. Simply injecting Vertporfin into scar tissue would not work.

@tatasabaya I wanted to post over here so we don't clog the other Verteporfin thread. In regard to what direction the hair would grow, all of the evidence from the animal testing shows it grows along natural growth patterns. I remember in the first mouse study that they had difficulty telling where the skin was injured, which I would infer means the hair was not growing in any unnatural way. I think using some sort of computer imaging and tracking software is the next step here. It's just too hard to tell with the naked eye if a follicle is growing back in the exact location, with same direction, color, number of hairs, etc.

Appreciate the update Dr. B! Can’t wait to see more results and testing in the next few months.

Guys we are all on the same team here! If there was complications let’s give Killian and the surgical team the benefit of the doubt. I think it’s important to remember that anyone taking this drug is serving as a test subject so it is up to the individual to make that judgment call of risk tolerance. Let’s just keep looking forward to more updates with all of the trials going forward!

It would definitely get some good exposure, his channel is pretty large and he does hair transplantation as well.

@Melvin- Moderator Do you have any plans on trying to get non hair transplant surgeons on board? Perhaps broadening out to some plastic surgeons might be worthwhile. At the very least the drug significantly reduces scarring, I can't imagine there isn't a cosmetic plastic surgeon who wouldn't be interested. It might be beneficial to see the drug work on a part of the skin without the intention being hair replication, but rather skin regeneration.

Kevin does a pretty good job explaining it here. It seems the theory is based off some pretty biased research from one doctor who selectively added patients to fit his assumptions. From my understanding, the blood supply is decreased because the follicle miniturizes, not the other way around. If blood flow caused miniaturization than hair transplantation would not work. The transplanted follicles would also miniaturize, as the area would still not have adequate blood flow. There are plenty of people with malocclusion and no hair loss and also plenty of people with hair loss and no malocclusion.

I mean this sounds like "blood flow theory" which doesn't have any real scientific backing from what I've read. That being said, we just need to test it in the balding area, all of it is conjecture until then.

The biopsy on the test area had twice as much hair as the control group. Typically, they do not harvest more than 50% of the hairs in the donor area, so that would be 100% regeneration. Now I don't believe from the photos we have seen that it looked like a 100% regeneration, at least visually speaking. But who knows, with typical hair transplantation it can take up to 18 months for hair to cycle and grow in. It may be the same for newly regenerated hairs, they may need to cycle to see the full effect.

It may be that we get an effective treatment, such as verteporfin and then have less invasive treatments that follow. Regardless, its good to see some actual progress lately.