takuma

So far it's two surgeons, Doctor Bargouthi and Doctor Bloxham that are actively experimenting with verteporfin on hair transplant patients, Have any other doctor's expressed interest? Does anyone know.

there's something that confuses me, so when we get a hair transplant the surgeon punches tiny holes in the scalp donor region and extracts follicles and when the skin heals it leaves scar tissue which doesn't grow hair. But, the surgeon also makes incisions in the recipient area at the top of the scalp and inserts the extracted follicles into those incisions, correct. So why does the hair grow back, after all the surgeon is wounding both areas, shouldnt the skin in both areas grow back as scarred skin that is unable to grow hair from it, or am i missing something

@DrTBarghouthi Hello Dr Bargouthi, I have a question, What do you plan to change in the next trial, regarding dosages, injection technique, tracking (ie tattooing each individual follicle extraction sites), etc? Also, do you have the date finalized with the patent(s) for the next trial? Thank you so much for doing these trials with Verteporfin doctor!

We next assessed the effects of multiple verteporfin doses. Treatment with two doses (POD 0 and 4) yielded healing rates, gross appearance, ECM, and EPF abundances comparable to single-dose effects (POD 0) (fig. S7). When dosage was increased to four treatments (POD 0, 4, 8, and 12), EPFs were almost fully depleted (fig. S7, D and E) but wound closure was delayed, hair regrowth was reduced, and ECM features diverged from those of unwounded skin (fig. S7, A to C). Thus, verteporfin affected wounds in a dose-dependent manner, with detrimental effects upon excessive dosing. Despite scars’ excess collagen, they possess ≤80% of skin’s strength because of inferior ECM organization (26). We sought to determine whether verteporfin-induced regeneration also functionally recovered skin’s mechanical robustness. Consistent with scars’ decreased structural integrity, POD 30 control wounds had significantly reduced tensile strength (versus skin; Fig. 4I, green versus red). In contrast, verteporfin-treated wounds’ tensile strength did not significantly differ from that of unwounded skin (Fig. 4I, green versus blue), supporting restoration of unwounded-like strength (representative force-displacement/stress-strain curves, fig. S12). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9008875/ From my understanding here, when the researchers tried multiple doses it had reduced hair regeneration and too long delayed the wound closure, but im not sure if this means they tried multiple doses at once or if they tried to do so within longer time intervals ie days or weeks. But, my assumption is they spaced it out because they mentioned four treatments implying they treated the wound with verteporfin four different times in that attempt I posted the study for reference

Did Dr Bargouthi confirm whether those hairs were new growing hairs or previously transected hairs ... that's what I'm concerned about, a false positive

If verteporfin works to regenerate hair, why would u want fut at all, if u got an unlimited donor bank, might as well go with fue, even if there are tons of mini fue scars they'll be covered with hair anyway

i think the price will go down dramatically as demand increases, so will supply and cost should go down, if verteporfin works! nobody with enough money to afford an HT already is going to not want it used, nobody wants that, unless they're like Norwood 2 and don't care.. But most people going for an HT are not going to fit into that mold, they're going to want something that regenerates their follicles and they're gonna want to go to Norwood 0, back to normal, who wouldn't if the option was there. Supply and Demand..I expect another thing to happen.. high extraction Fue will become the standard if we're able to tap into an unlimited supply of hair follicles for HTs, then i can see doctors extracting out 40-60 percent or more of hair follicles from the donor as long or as much as the amount of regeneration allows. This is all contingent on if it works! and if so, how much regeneration we can tap into once dosage and technique is perfected.

Why in 3-4 months..why is the hair from within the wound if it's there not showing now...why wouldn't the doctor be able to see if there is regrowth there. Im just trying to understand it

Why not just shave the whole extraction site now on the test and the control , and take pictures of each so he can determine if the hair hes seeing is new regrowth or non extracted hairs, it should be pretty easy to do and he won't have to wait months longer to see if it's working or not...Unless the new hair is supposed to sprout months later after the new skin is already almost formed... i have no idea tbh

then how is he supposed to gauge regrowth at all.. I'm confused...are we going to need a full fue to know if this works or not ..lol

one suggestion for Dr Bloxham to analyze the results is to take biopsies of the treated and untreated areas and send them to a lab for microscopic comparison for scar prevention and hair regeneration assessment, the same way that Dr Bargouthi did. Not sure if it's too early for that or not though. Also, extreme magnification pictures would help in general to gauge hair regrowth.

Wow , he said he should have 2-3month updates next week! So far it's seeming to work, Dr Bloxham's seeing hair, but he doesn't know if it's new hair from the verteporfin or something else, but after seeing it on 3 patients, i think we can all assume it's working fellas!

I'm curious to know if verteporfin if results in hair regeneration from the donor site if it will regenerate hair at the recipient site as well after wounding the scalp

When we get a hair follicle extracted, the process of puncturing the dermis to pull out the follicular units creates a scarred tissue as those micro wounds heal after the extraction, scar tissue is different from regular healthy skin, hair and sweat glands don't grown on scar tissue, but these appendages can grow back in healthy skin. From my understanding, Verteporfin inhibits the scar formation, thus returning completely healthy scarless skin, this allows for the hair and even sweat glands to regrow in the healthy new skin. At least that's what it showed in animal models, i believe it's been tested on both rats and pigs, and we now have at least two hair transplant doctors testing it on human patients now, this drug is FDA approved and has an excellent safety profile already...so we're not really worried about that aspect of it... We're focused on two things...non scarred skin is a game changer for so many different ailments and conditions such as for burn victims, and also for hair transplants, and Hair follicle regeneration is the holy grail for hair loss and hair transplants.

who else excited about the update from Dr Bargouthi on the first trial... I'm so excited i can barely contain myself 😊

Wow! this is so exciting! 😊

I'm sure, he's just been busy with patients, Hopefully Dr Bargouthi will update us soon, I'm tagging him @DrTBarghouthi

Oh yeah, i think you're right...i don't see them posted either, just the video

Sansi i think he posted them in the thread, check back to 6 months from now...im pretty sure these photos were posted

Yes Indeed, likewise i think it's very critical for all the trials studying if the hair follicles are regrowing again after extraction is tattooing every single follicle extracted area so we can have concrete proof of where & which follicles grew back if they did or not. Otherwise we're really not going to be able to accurately assess the results on hair growth.

I thought he said he has the patient booked for Mid-End of April and Early May as possible slots for the trial. I remember him saying that he booked for two possible dates; did something change?

If it regrows the hair, then there really is no reason why it shouldn't regrow all of it, it's the mechanism of the drug to do so, so I hope Dr Barghouthi can find the ideal dosage and other factors that leads to 100 percent regrowth, then it would just be a matter of getting enough hair transplants to take give anyone a full head of hair. And if it works in the recipient area or a bald head on the top, then we won't even need hair transplants anymore, it would be a full on cure; that being said i'm cautiously optimistic that it will work on completely bald areas of the scalp, but hopefully it will.

Thanks Melvin, that was an incredible livestream! Thanks for hosting these livestreams with Dr Barghouthi.

@Melvin- Moderator Hey Melvin, can you post the link for the Livestream, so we can tune in. Thank You,

One thought i had is possibly the new hair that's forming after verteporfin is not dht sensitive to the degree that miniaturized hairs are or If thick robust hairs form after verteporfin to the scalp then you can essentially get all ur hair back without a transplant, sure dht will keep attacking those follicles but that could be a slow process, and if it works then you can just repeat the treatment when the follicles miniaturize again, and it also helps for future drugs that might come out to maintain those results. Plus it would save you from traumatizing the scalp over and over by extracting follicles from the donor and applying verteporfin and then coming back after the Donor has recovered and doing it again and repeating till u have full coverage. If wounding the recipient area can take you to full coverage again then why not do it that way.