Square1

2 hours ago, SouthernYankee said:

Absolutely 

Good luck!

I know it is not part of a trial, but will it nevertheless be possible to do some scientific hair counts? 

Of course, if we measure the average amount of grafts in a certain area before the procedure, keep track of how many are removed and then measure it 6/12 months after, we will gain some more information on the percentage of regrowth that we can expect.

1 hour ago, Melvin- Admin said:

 

Fantastic that he is doing this and of course, as a researcher you should remain neutral and not get people's hope up too much, but I was hoping for more confidence from dr. Mohebi's side that this will actually work. It comes across like he is doing just not to get bugged anymore

Anyway, what matters is that he will do the trials. Excellent work, again.

1 hour ago, Hair Tomorrow said:

Any ideas about which surgeons in the UK might be the best option for us to approach and ask if they will do a Verteporfin FUE test?

I have no idea. 

What I do know is that just inquiring about verteporfin is already good for the cause. The more docs hear about vert, the more they will get interested in following the developments and the higher the chance they eventually are willing to try / use it. 

8 hours ago, tatasabaya said:

Wow that's great news. I remember him being very skeptical about Verteporfin around 4 months ago. The fact that he's starting a trial now is very encouraging! Even more so given his background.

Thank you Melvin.

This and the fact that he appararently rejected the Acell / PRP hype due to lack of scientific evidence is encouraging. If somebody who has seen hypes and trends for what they were is willing to try vp, that means that he perceives the update of dr. Barghouthi and dr. Bloxham as more than just hype. 

Given his seniority and prominence in the HT-scene, it is clear that he has very little to gain from this experiment except for a way to get better results. I think this helps to convince other doctors and to legitimize the experiments in their eyes.

Great work again by Melvin.

2 hours ago, Melvin- Admin said:

Well, that was because I didn’t have control of the audio quality. But I can do it pre-recorded. 
 

Community, like this post if you prefer pre-recorded. Hit thanks if you want it live. 

Fantastic work. Parsa Mohebi is a really well known doctor, if he could be convinced of vt's benefits and eventually starts offering treatments with vt, the drug is close to becoming mainstream. 

Live or pre-recorded? It doesn't matter to me. What matters is that he starts doing the trials. Best of luck and thanks again! Is it btw already sure the he will start trials or is the meeting to convince him of doing so? 

7 hours ago, sansi said:

hi guys, am I missing something ?

In this pic 0.4 test is on the left corner of the head.

In below photo and video it more seems to be on the center.

 

In the pics of the OP, the 0.4 test site is visually at the same place as the results pics. I do agree that in this image and video, it seems like the site is at a different place. Maybe there is a logical explanation for it.

12 minutes ago, Fox243 said:

I don’t think it’s extreme personally. We know that Verteporfin isn’t harmful and does something – maybe not full regeneration, but at least less scarring and partial regeneration. 
 

None of the literature demonstrates Verteporfin can heal old scars so imagine you get a HT without Verteporfin. Then it’s possible you ruin your only chance at hair regeneration and are forced to take meds and have a conservative look for the rest of your life when if you wait for Verteporfin, there’s a chance you could be nw1 without any meds

I agree. If you got the money to spare, I see no reason why not. Plus you are contributing to science if you document everything well. 

Hope it does something for old scars too btw, or that you can remove transplanted hair with (partial) regeneration. 

1 hour ago, sansi said:

I think this case didn't get proper attention. This guy healed scarless after burn injury with verteporfin.
https://www.realself.com/review/scarless-after-verteporfin-injected-scar-revision#media-entry-1374536-video-76612

With just a couple of pictures and a 6 seconds video, it is hard to get the context.  If it is indeed true that that injury is healed like it seemd it is, it is impressive. Is there regrowth though?

4 hours ago, takuma said:

i doubt hair if it grows back as terminal robust hair that it will reminiturize so soon, it should be months even years before it reminiturizes.

I think we still don't really know how the miniturization process works and what the exact role of DHT is. It stands to reason however that, let's say a follicle starts to shrink at 30, it had endured 15 years of peak DHT production. So if the follicle can be "restarted" with verteporfin, it would take a long time before ever needing another treatment again, if ever.

If you would take a miniturized follicle , remove it from the scalp (like a donor hair in a transplant) and treat the area with vp, would it then regenerate without the miniturization? 

1 hour ago, Fox243 said:

Honestly, I'm not sure though. I still am optimistic about the future. Of course, I wish I were seeing faster results, but even for HTs, the results only start becoming apparent at 6 months.

I guess I feel the same way. But to be fair, dr. Barghouthi´s initial results, despite showing some regrowth and therefore demonstrating that the mechanism could be working, were not cure-level yet. His recent results, after 16 months, are a lot closer to that. These trials could still end up going the same way.

1 hour ago, Berba11 said:

I'd have thought that visibly better skin/less scarring in and of itself would be a game changer for several reasons; the ability to wear the back and sides shorter without exposing dot scars or a prominent strip scar; repair patients who might have grafts extracted from areas that won't be covered by hair (hairline raising repairs for eg) etc.

Personally I'd say that's significant enough. But the addition of some extra hair growth - even if only a little bit - ultimately is a bit of a game changer. Even with only minor regrowth in the extracted areas, you're now getting a little bit of extra coverage in the donor so that it will at least look better. Whether or not the regrowth would be significant enough to start talking about "endless donor supplies" is another matter altogether.

I can see that as being an advantage. However, given the results dr. Barghouthi showed, I would anticipate slightly more regrowth. It's of course too early to draw conclusions just yet, so we might not put to much weight on this.

3 hours ago, -TheHairUpThere- said:

Absolutely insane. There's really thick terminal hairs growing in the middle of the fut scar. Even at the lowest dose. And this is only 3 months. And not just regrowth but the skin itself looks way different. Not shiny and leathery. This is wild. Especially for 3 months. Hopefully it just keeps getting better from here. We may have finally got the cure fellas!

Overall, there seems to be an effect of verteporfin: better looking skin and some regrowth. Given that these changes hold, is it that significant though?

4 hours ago, sansi said:

Hope Dr. Bloxham's updates will confirm this and there will be FUE revision trials. It should be much easier than full FUE, just divide donor area into few parts, try different wounding techniques and inject verteporfin. Even a small trial can be very useful .

Great posts and great investagative spirit! 

I also wonder if transplanted grafts, when moved again, would grow back using verteporfin. If either of these ideas work, people with previous transplants can also enjoy the enhanced / unlimited donor. 

14 hours ago, Fox243 said:

This has caught attention on reddit too now haha: 

 

Great work, again!

With this type of exposure, I am sure that people will get their hands on verteporfin / visudyne and try it at home / the beauty salon in combination with microneedling.

Questions I would like to see answered are if this could regenerate earlier removed donor hairs or miniturized hair (somehow removing the miniturization of the follicles). 

37 minutes ago, Fox243 said:

the former two shouldn't be wasted with a doctor imho. any individual who cares enough about those can try it themselves. i would try it but i'm not interested in recipient site wounding anyways because those hairs are likely not dht resistant.

Well, if wounding + verteporfin does produce full or even partial regrowth, why not do it once with a $200,- price tag and do it again in 10 years (or whenever the non-DHT resistant hairs start to miniturize again)?

4 hours ago, Fox243 said:

Yes, visudyne is just the name brand, just as Propecia is the name brand for finasteride.

Good to hear, I too thought that there was one way to get the stuff: for $2000 from just one German manufacturer. Didn't know there were generics.

I am not aware at all in the medical field, but is medchemexpress.com a reliable site? It soundsrather shaky

12 hours ago, Fox243 said:

The doc is close to ready. I will share it here and people can help make edits: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s3JkF9woMIebkXbpE_UxrjBfNy9i7AuBclDqn9HGrAo/edit?usp=sharing

Looks awesome!

Maybe a slight addition could be made with regards to the sourcing and the pricing of verteporfin? Docs could then have an idea how much a trial would cost them and what they would have to do actually get it.

20 minutes ago, sansi said:

Many doctors work in comfort and earn bunch of money so the last thing they will want is experimenting with unknown drug.They will join only if it becomes widespread and competitive.
We need to find innovative doctors like Doctor Bs or some novice/not famous Doctors who are yet to enter market and don't have much clients.

Maybe organizing all the evidence in one space like photos, videos, articles would be helpful to share it with doctors.

At some point, the money itself doesn't do that much anymore. If you are already financially independant and live in luxury, how much does an extra paycheck do for you? 

It is very probable that for many of these people, the possibility of contributing to the field and science in general, is an attractive idea. The problem is that there have been many hypes that turned out to do nothing, so there is a lot of scepticism to overcome. Luckily, dr. Barghouthi is a member of the ISHRS, so that would likely carry extra weight. Dr. Bloxham is not, but still his finding will be very important. If several doctors find the same thing, even sceptics will become interested.

2 hours ago, Fox243 said:

I think I'll wait another week before asking him b/c I don't want to annoy him, but will provide the update here if I am allowed to.

The last thing we want is that docs refuse to do more work, because they felt being bugged the first time. So yeah, I agree. The guy is pretty enthousiastic so he will likely share his findings anyway, sooner or later.

Have been in contact with a Dutch-Turkish clinic that politely turned the offer of participation down. Unfortunately, the claim of regrowing the donor area after a transplant was also made by others including dr. Coen Gho. Many people familiar with the matter know that this is nonsense, so if you make similar claims, you are faced with resistance right off the bat. 

If 1 could get 1 clinic to participate, that would already be great.

1 hour ago, sansi said:

That's why I think it's worth to contact him, he makes great video updates, but that requires time. We're close to month 4 but have update only for month 1.

I would totally understand if he wants to keep the format and not publish anything before his video updates, but if we had photos/videos from month 4, combine it with Dr. Barghouthis photos, Mascharak and Talbott papers, we would have pretty solid evidence to persuade doctors.

It would be really beneficial to know from dr. Bloxham if, after 4 months, there are significant and (what we see as) positive changes in the areas treated with verteporfin as compared to other areas. 

Even without further details, having this information as early as possible helps to steer the direction of further research. 

20 minutes ago, Fox243 said:

I mean the issue here is "waiting" until they find the best dosage. Who is "they"? Dr. Barghouthi and Dr. Bloxham? It might take years for them to find the best protocol on their own. Who knows if they will even do trials after this, as they've already paid so much out of pocket that we shouldn't expect them to do anything else?

We need more doctors to try, as part of a global trial. Rather than reaching out to doctors asking them to try verteporfin, I think its more important to emphasize that you will only get a HT with verteporfin. If they see enough patients only willing to get transplants with verteporfin, then they will understand the demand will only be there for doctors who offer verteporfin trials.

I just posted the results of dr. Barghouthi on the leading Dutch forum for hair loss and checked hairlosstalk and hairlosscure2020, which have no mention of these latest results. 

More exposure is crucial. The online hair loss crowd is already niche, and the percentage that knows about verteporfin is only a fraction of that. The more people know about this stuff and call for trials, the higher the chance that more doctors are willing to try it. 

If we can get just a couple of studies with a objective hair count that show consistent regrowth, the ball will start to roll as more and more docs will use it and keep finding better ways and dosages

To play devil's advocate. I think that the test-site for 0.4 does not look completely untouched. To me, the density is visually lower than the part of the head above that was actually untouched. Dose optimization is still an issue it seems.

However, the test-site lacks the open holes that the control site clearly has, so the most logical outcome is that considerable regrowth has taken place. Also very positive is that this regrown hair is still here after give or take 16 months.

Fantastic that more research is in the pipeline. Does it include more scientific hair count measurements? If so, we can put a percentage on the hair it regrows and gives an benchmark for other scientists to improve upon. 

Overall, great news and many thanks again for the work of dr. Barghouthi. What percentage of regrowth do you think is achieved here?

If both the Bloxham and the Barghouthi trials find any percentage of regrowth that is persistant over a longer period of time, I would call them a success.  It would show that the mechanism works and is capable of delivering results. If there is, let's say, a regrowth of 20%, that means that 20% of the skin had the right circumstances, amount of verteporfin delivered in the right way to grow back in such a way that would create new hair follicles. Further optimization would need to take place to understand how to increase it to a higher percentage.

Of course, it would be even better to get a patient a full head of new hair back, but if it pans out like described I would be happy about it. 

5 hours ago, alopeciaphobia said:

Well, it's normal in a strip procedure that there is (temporary) shock loss in areas adjacent to the wound. Maybe that shock loss is caused by the Engrailed-1 expression that verteporfin inhibits?

I find it very implausible that a hair follicle can grow in a matter of weeks, and start growing fully terminal hair at a normal rate immediately after. Both in babies starting to develop scalp hair, as well as people partially reversing MPB through medication, follicles slowly start producing velluslike hairs and gradually transition to growing terminal hair normally.

This is why I can't imagine the increased hairiness in the control sites to be regrowth. The hairs are too long and too thick for how young they would be if they had regrown.

Didn't dr. Bloxham state that clients experienced new hair growth as opposed to less hair falling out? Anyway, we will find this out. The shock loss hair is supposed to grow back in the coming months. So if the hair count in the sites adjacent to the verteporfin injecting will become similar in treated and control sites , it was probably shock loss.

In the animal trials, did the new hairs started growing directly from the treated areas, or did the areas heal first and thereafter started growing new follicles? I guess that is would be expected to have the same pattern going on in humans.

On 10/21/2023 at 2:17 PM, alopeciaphobia said:

Very interesting results from Dr. Bloxham, but I believe the conclusions drawn here regarding regrowth are premature. Hair follicles don't grow from scratch within a month usually. The injected areas looking hairier is likely to be due to less shock loss, especially considering the length of the hair, as Dr. Bloxham mentions in the video.

There seems to be regrowth in the areas adjacent to the sites injected with verteporfin. I get that the scarless healing would yield new skin and therefore new hair growth in the injected sites, but I wonder why it would happen in sites next to it. 

The difference in how the skin heals is definately interesting and is what we would expect to see if verteporfin works.

Agreed that it is way to early to make definitive statements. I am mildly optimistic though.