Kevin seems a little misinformed on that particular part. Michael Longaker (the doctor heading the Stanford Studies) has stated in several interviews that he believes the mechanism will work with preexisting scars. There would need to be a scar revision surgery, where they excise all of the existing scar tissue, and then inject verteporfin into the wound. Verteporfin has the potential to prevent/reverse scars from hair restoration surgeries and to regrow hair in balding areas for multiple forms of alopecia. It's unfortunate that more clinics and doctors are not willing to or have not shown interest in trying the drug off-label. The drug has a great safety profile and has been FDA approved for 20 years so the risk seems minimal for patients. If the drug is ineffective, the end result would be a scar, which was already the outcome of hair restoration surgery. Yes there are questions to what amount of hair would regrow as a result of the drug, anywhere from 50-100% of hair regeneration, but that is still a whole lot better than 0%! Additionally those numbers also came from a porcine study using a different but similar drug, where they were not selecting for the optimal amount of hair regeneration. In the mouse study there was practically 100% regeneration of follicles.
