Hairgain

Rather than complain here, why not just give him a call? If he hears from us, maybe he will come forward since we are anxious to follow the state of the experimental outcomes. Feller and Broxham is the name of the group.

Released less than a day ago.

Here's a thought I had related to this and it involves hair parts. To make hair parts less noticeable, it there potential to wound skin in the area, inject verteporfin and have it regrow with more hair to cover these areas which appear thin and scalp is see through? It sounds to me like the possibilities are becoming enormous regarding what this drug can do. The problem is the expense and limited number of medical professionals willing to do experiments with it.  

23 hours ago, takuma said:

Guys, I just found out two groups of researchers have conducted a microneedling test with verteporfin, and the conclusion of the studies are encouraging. These were animal studies, but I think this warrants Human experimentation with this technique of applying verteporfin. One of the group of reseachers developed a microneedling patch and outsourced the ingredients from Med Chem Express USA it seems. The studies were conducted on mice and rabbits

 

 

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-023-39129-6

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1385894723035970

 

 

Murine studies are not applicable to human skin. When is the same experiment going to be used on porcine models? If it works in them then I will be fairly assured the method will also work in humans due having a more similar skin structure. 

Sorry for my absence of months and then posting so much. I am excited to see the successful results of Dr. Taleb Bargouthi's experiment with FUE and verteporfin to regenerate the skin and hair removed.

I am fairly sure fixing my situation would be best accomplished in a microneedling procedure. Ideally, it would be best to just inject the verteporfin without wounding the skin at all and get newly formed hairs but that seems not the way this drug works. Something has to signal the body that a wound has been inflicted in order for the healing process to be enacted. Now the question is how deep and large a wound is needed to get new skin to be regenerated with dense hair appendages? These are experiments Dr. Bloxham wants to do after listening to videos of him. The thing is who and when will a participant come forward? It won't be me, especially if a biopsy must be taken. I'd rather just get pictures taken to compare the difference before and after. 

Another thing to keep in mind is that once a wide wound is made, which is better to sew up the area? Staples or dissolvable stitches? Dr. Bloxham uses staples, which I seem to not like and they could cause follicular loss should they get into an area containing follicular ostia.   

Here is the video. It's not the Bloxham one as I was hoping: 

I have other issues related to hair and am wondering if Verteporfin could solve them. I have temples that are nearly hairless and am wondering if wounding the area and injecting the Verteporfin is likely to get a result of new skin tissue with hair appendages? Right now I am getting Kenalog shots to see if anything in the area can regenerate. I just got my second series of shots. It seems questionable if there is any progress but the dermatologist sees hair regrowth in his opinion. In addition to this I am taking 7.5 mg of oral minoxidil (2.5 mg, three times a day) for 7 months, vitex supplement for 1 month, inositol supplement for one month, and iron supplement for one month. I am hoping to get an even frontal hairline or youthful rounded hairline. 

Now another issue I have is what dermatologists tell me is a hair whorl in my right vertex which also exhibits a degree of male pattern baldness. I'm not sure this is exclusively the case. My situation was evaluated through Hair Metrix, reflectance confocal microscopy and dermatoscope. I refuse to biopsy. I have multiple thin linear areas of hairless scalp that extend downward in my right vertex. I was under tremendous stress a few years ago and felt tingling and numbness in the area, so suspect cicatricial alopecia being possible but did have the 100 day telogen effluvium following the incident. In addition, I had red pustules and pain from the stress months after due to my hair loss. I've gone to experts and none dare to transplant given the likely possibility of transection due to the areas of loss being so linear and thin. In summary, I want full hair coverage and no scalp peeking through. What is the likelihood Verteporfin can accomplish my objectives? How can I best fix my situation? Any thoughts? I am not interested in scalp micropigmentation. 

Sorry to divert somewhat regarding my particular situation but am very distraught over it as I think I caused it due to freaking out from learning of my initial temple hair loss. 

Additionally, I have very long hair and so finding the areas that need to get resolved could be extra difficult to isolate. My situation is a mess and the medical profession has failed me thus far in bringing about a cosmetic solution to my satisfaction. 

1 hour ago, sr1486 said:

Really hope we get Bloxham’s 3 month results soon

Hair Transplant Network - YouTube 

I just got this update that Melvin is doing a video sometime today regarding Verteporfin. Might be the 3 month result from Dr. Bloxham? 

On 5/16/2023 at 4:27 PM, MrFox said:

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. 

I really don't understand why you say there's no scientific backing to the blood flow theory. Could you please further explain your position to give a strong case for your statement? From how I understand the situation, that without blood flow to the follicles they shrink, deplete and die off. What's unscientific about that? It makes perfect logical sense. If you get no blood flow to any part of the body for long enough time it simply shrinks in size, loses function and dies off. 

19 minutes ago, Fox243 said:

@Hairgain if ur interested in following up, there's a derm I was talking to almost a year ago who was interested. Her name is Dr Anastasia Therianou. She liked the idea of verteporfin but wanted to see more proof, so maybe you can show her Dr. B's latest photos and express your interest to her.  

I know of her actually. She is situated in UK I believe? I am in New York. Might be worth chatting with her about it to gain some insight. 

I was hoping for wounding with Verteporfin added trials for old scarring alopecia and regular androgenetic alopecia cases. Wish some dermatologists could come on board for this modality to trial for regrowing hair. I never got a hair transplant and have no interest in doing one, but would like to see if it has possibilities in getting my temple areas filled in and some thinning spots on my vertex thickened up. 

11 minutes ago, Fox243 said:

Dr. Bloxham is recruiting 3 more patients for both FUT/FUT revision trials using verteporfin. Reply to this message if you're interested.

This is proof Melvin's pitch was effective! Great job buddy. It shows how even if one has no degree next to a name that in the right circles of people an individual can be taken seriously. Well done!

8 hours ago, Rasputin said:

 

My logic (but my logic could obviously be wrong) is that, like you said, it would regenerate healthy skin, but male pattern baldness is not a skin issue. I think Verteporfin doesn't "care" about hair, whether vellus or terminal, it just regenerates the skin and tissues how they were before the wound.

It shouldn't magically regrow a terminal hair when it was a vellus before the wound. Let's say you don't have terminal hair on the chest and you use verteporfin, it won't grow terminal hair.

Now, sure, the miniaturization of the hair is a process (I mean by that, you had terminal hair before, it's not like you were always with miniaturized hair), but I don't get why Verteporfin would regenerate the skin with the "healthy" hair follicle, if, at the time of the wound, it was already weakened / miniaturized.

I hope I'm wrong though. But if it just regenerate the healthy hair follicles in the safe zone for exemple or the beard, then I don't see what's the issue. We just go for hair transplant and we're good.

I agree that if a normal chest hair is of a certain type, Verteporfin should regrow a hair that is normal for its skin type and location. However the difference with miniaturized hair is that it was a process of DHT exposure that caused it to miniaturize, but if a new layer of skin is grown that time has not been able to alter that by logic would tell me rather than a vellus or lanugo type of hair being regrown it should instead produce a terminal hair.

The other instance of why I think a terminal hair may not be regrown is the skin tension hypothesis. If there is too much muscle mass and not enough blood to reach the area through capillaries, then there is not what's needed to create a thick hair. There is a real argument to this as men who transition with drugs that change the skull mass many seem to regrow these areas of hair thinning and balding with time, at least partially if not fully. It's like they've reversed the process of what caused the issue.  

Our skulls do continue to grow in mass as we age from what I've read, adding credibility to my position. I think the reason woman lose hair in different areas from men is their skull growth patterns by what sections increase in size with time, thus explaining the female "Christmas Tree" pattern (as an example). However sometimes yet more uncommonly men and women can get skull growth patterns that are more commonly found in the opposite sex. I know a lot of people dismiss this but it seems to make sense from my observation of the morphology of people with time. I could be wrong. Usually a younger person will have a smaller sized skull on average than an older person. 

12 minutes ago, Rasputin said:

I don't really believe in this "microneedling the recipient area and inject verteporfin". There's no scarring there unless some failed or not hair transplant has been done (so incision have been made). It would most likely regrow what you already had meaning nothing if you're bald. 

The point of verteporfin is to prevent scarring and regrowing hair (as it was before). So you can transplant it but not have to go to the hassle of smp the scar or donor restocking with bht. 

Another big question would be, if the hair regrows, would it be possible to repeat this procedure on these hair? 

So you think if I incision wounded my bald temples, then injected Verteporfin, the likely result would be regrown healthy skin tissue but no regeneration of terminal follicles to the area? The thing is this Verteporfin is supposed to repair the scarring process with healthy skin, so if the area originally had terminal follicles before the DHT damage occurred then why wouldn't it regenerate with terminal follicles? I guess there's still a lot about this wound repair healing process with YAP inhibition we don't know yet in every circumstance. This process is all very novel and there are so many different variables one has to consider for the range of quality in a result. It may take years to figure out exactly how to do the process for the best results based on area of the scalp or other body parts for regeneration. It's fascinating yet scary due to uncertainty of results at this point. Another interesting thing is I read that the Verteporfin can only be used once, and doing repeated injections in the same place has shown to make the scarring worse. 

There's so many variables that need to be worked out to get the best result with this method. The concentration of Verteporfin, the depth of wounding, the width of the incisions and how many can be made in an area of thinning to be effective. Can anything be added to the Verteporfin mixture to make it potentially more effective. Or what kind of baldness and how much is needed to make it worth the risk. Everyone is viewing it from the lenses of replenishing the donor section. I am looking at this towards using the treatment alone to repair areas with or without transplantation. For example, I have the receded temples among other problems. Could making wounds and injecting the Verteporfin get me terminal hairs back in those depleted areas. These are experiments very worthwhile to try. I have thinning in my vertex but not complete baldness. This is especially difficult to resolve and doubt anything whether Minoxidil, Rosemary, Finasteride, Dutasteride, Bicalutamide, Spironolactone will solve it. If just some follicles died off in between mostly healthy ones what does one do to regain fullness/coverage? Transplants are risky in these cases as well. The dermatologists just tell me to go on medication but then I get bad reactions to all of them. I feel like I cannot get a workable solution and am deeply troubled by it.

32 minutes ago, Fabio69 said:

Amplifica have athree hair loss treatments and one should be going into trial at the end if this yr. But if verteporfin can just reduce scarring and regrow hair then most individuals would probs be happy with that. Lets hope.

I'm not familiar with all three treatments Amplifica is pursuing. Could you find me a link that tells about them please? I've been to their official web site, it doesn't relate much.

1 hour ago, Fabio69 said:

Fukuda, tsuji, and stemson want do anything they just delay and waste time. I hope i am wrong. Fukuda planned on human trials this yr but probs will not happen. Tsuji said trials in 2020 but nothing happend.

Well it was the COVID-19 with Tsuji and due to this his investment went dry. Now he has some backing. Is it enough? I doubt it. He's reorganizing with a different team. He's had difficulty finding investors in the past and went to the public to raise money. Something doesn't seem right. Tsuji seems to not want to do live interviews.

Fukuda did come up with something sound to present lately. Too bad though it was with a mouse. Mice should really be disallowed from experimenting for a hair loss cure related to humans. They're too different. The mice regrow hair easily due to gamma delta t-cell locations and greater proliferation compared to humans, their skin is more flexible and they grow hair and shed all at once unlike humans typically do. They're too different. My guess is Fukuda Lab is working on cloning human hair now. The thing to keep in mind is there is a real possibility of cloned hairs taking in humans. It did in 2015 but grew in awkward directions. Word has it Amplifica recently got new hairs to grow for 9 months, also they grew not like the rest of the hairs and the newly generated ones failed to cycle. I think the major challenge in human hair cloning is going to be the cycling issue. There's some lack of signaling issue with these cloned hairs in humans that doesn't allow for them to regenerate (cycle) from what I read. I have no idea how they're going to figure out this complexity.

Worst among them is Stemson. It seems they never have anything solid to report regarding advancing their method of hair generation. No progress to report in years. Huge staff but nothing to show for it. The CEO seems to be avoidant as possible unless he has no choice. 

Of all these players I would place bets on Fukuda Lab having the best chance. 

I find what Dr. Bargouthi is doing to be fascinating and working but am concerned as to what the final result is going to show from an aesthetic standpoint. Sure we see new hair growth but also the areas where the FUE grafts were taken still show white scarred looking skin. The FUT results should be more telling I think. The Red Duroc Pig result using the FAK Inhibitor VS-6062 showed hair regeneration but then the area of scarring on the edge of the wound seems still present. It's the black outer background surrounding the regenerated hairs. So we have improvement with these methods but is it a perfect result? I doubt it but is greatly improved nonetheless. 

Verteporfin seems like it's becoming the new liquid gold for the follicularly challenged. The FAK inhibitors though deserve a shot. It's been tried on people for cancer. Wondering if Dr. Bargouthi might try? Best part is it can be applied to the surface to work, injection not necessary. 

I'm also anxious for Fukuda Lab at Yokohama University to surprise us with terminal quality human follicles that take and cycle. They got it figured out for the mice, now we need to get it to the wo/men. 

Then there's Organ Tech and Dr. Tsuji. He has a cure but seems to never get off the ground. 

Plus there's Stemson Therapeutics which basically likes to hire people to work for them and the rest of what they do is a secret they can't tell. 

In hair we care. 

5 hours ago, Fabio69 said:

Just to understand the verteporfin trials going on, is it just the 3 FUT DR BArghouthi trials in MAY

Here's what Dr. Bargouthi stated on page 21: "We will potentially have 2-3 FUT trials in May hopefully. One is a new FUT procedure and one is a revision. These will be done in other clinics with some colleagues (will mention who once they’re happy for me to do so). I will probably travel there to share what I know so far during their trial. Will keep you updated ofcourse."

I read this just now from Verteporfin Week in the Hair Loss World | Hair Loss Cure 2020. “This VS-6062 FAK inhibitor does the same thing as verteporfin, but it inhibits a target which is upstream of YAP. Verteporfin only inhibits YAP, while VS-6062 inhibits FAK (which controls YAP) and also other targets. FAK inhibitors can also be applied topically, with no injections required. Moreover, VS-6062 has already gone through Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials to treat cancer.”

So it looks like humans have been tested with FAK inhibitors, if there was no adverse side-effects then I can't see why the FAK inhibitors shouldn't be tried for our purposes as well.

34 minutes ago, MrFox said:

I agree the FDA is woefully inept, but fixing the entire drug approval process is way more of a challenge than just continuing to work with Verteporfin. We should consider ourselves lucky that the drug was already approved. Perhaps if we continue to get great results from using Verteporfin than it will be possible to push other drugs through the approval process. Also other countries are much faster with approvals, so perhaps we will see the drugs approved there in the recent future. 

Dr. Taleb Bargouthi is situated in Jordan, so am wondering if the FAK inhibitors are allowed to be tested there? Maybe he could answer for us. Sad thing is unless the agenda exists the bureaucracy of the FDA makes the USA a dead zone for human experimentation.

4 minutes ago, MrFox said:

Correct me if I'm wrong but in the studies I have seen with FAK inhibitors, it was only a partial thickness wound. It may be that a deeper wound causes a better regenerative response in combination with the drugs. My understanding is that the FAK inhibitor drugs are not approved by the FDA yet and therefore that is why Verteporfin was used. I think that was exactly why it was chosen by the Stanford Team; they were looking for drugs already in use. As we know getting a new drug passed by the FDA can take up to 20 years, so definitely would be a hinderance to immediately researching on human patients. 

So when will the FDA approve them? That's the problem. They're slowing things down often needlessly. Again, the pigs seem okay so far, how many years do we have to wait to be sure they're safe to use (FAK inhibitors)? The FDA is slowing down and preventing progress from happening. What I'd like to know is what makes the FDA better at determining than most people in the profession what is reasonably safe from what is not?

Actually the Stanford team used both FAK & YAP inhibitors in studies. Verteporfin in April 2021 and FAK inhibition study September, 2021.

With the FDA being in control how long will we have to wait before FAK inhibitors are used in people? If to them it's not a priority it may be a long wait for sure. I always go back to this. If hair loss research were treated as a life or death emergency we'd have a cure already. Look how quickly COVID-19 was addressed with multiple vaccines. No delays there as to whether they were safe for humans and were being pushed on us. |Turns out some of the vaccines were quite bad too and they allowed them to be used in people. It is in situations like this that I hate these medical authorities. They're hypocrites and have an agenda that is different from ours. If we want something desperately to improve our quality of life nothing should get in our way. Then the question comes who has adequate understanding to know what's reasonably safe to experiment with on humans. What does the FDA have that others don't to determine what is reasonably safe from what is not? 

1 hour ago, MrFox said:

Bald areas still have hair follicles, they are just miniaturized. Why are they miniaturized? Prolonged exposure to DHT and your hair follicles having a genetic sensitivity to DHT. If the area is wounded to the point that it would normally scar but Verteporfin is used to set it on a new healing pathway. One in which "NEW" hair follicles hair being created. So why would the new hair follicle already be miniaturized? 

What I'd like to understand is why FAK inhibitor VS-6063 regrew 50% hair density in porcine studies over 180 days. Wondering if more density occurred beyond that time period or if the hairs continued to cycle. Something is still lacking in the regenerative mechanism ability if it won't produce a result closer to 100% normal coverage. What is it in the process of regeneration with the FAK inhibitor VS-6063 that is still lacking compared to what is found in a natural healthy situation? Perhaps it heals healthy to some extent but still has scarring mechanism present or doesn't contain all regenerative properties to make it perfect. I'm wondering if combining one of these inhibitors with something else simultaneously could lead to an improved result (maybe certain growth factors not being produced FGF-7, FGF-9 assuming that's the case)? Could it be getting a different concentration of injection will produce better results with more hair regeneration? Now it is suggested the FAK inhibitors are superior to YAP inhibitors. If the YAP inhibitors won't work as well as the FAK inhibitors then I don't understand the point to using them over the preferred option. If we see the pigs haven't developed any diseases after the FAK inhibitors used then it makes sense to go with them. If the better FAK inhibitors produce 50% normal hair density in pigs then this is barely the threshold of cosmetically acceptable coverage. We don't even know yet what percentage of hair coverage the Verteporfin provides. What needs to be done is a study of both used separately in a patient to see which works better. Why limit the studies to one drug only? Limiting what can be used won't bring scientific advances forward as well. 

Another thing I'd like to know is how well did the Verteporfin work for Dr. Umar's experimentation in healing keloid scars? I wish he could have gone further into this during the discussion and also did it regrow hair in the process and how much? 

It would be great if there could be a collaborative effort to study these drug types among those with the scientific background to figure out how to best engineer the drugs to use effectively in patients. 

Melvin.

   I recall from the discussion you had with the surgeons one had mentioned he was impressed with the recent advances made in hair cloning at the meeting. Were you present at this part of the meeting? Could you give us a glimpse into what was being discussed regarding the hair cloning recent advances made and who's behind them? 

2 hours ago, Square1 said:

They predicted wars over water.

I think that countries will wage wars to secure the supplies of verteporfin for their balding populations.

You know if it really came down to this, we'd know we've got the real deal for a cure. If though one has to first damage an area only to repair it I don't think this is so good, likely not a suitable cure. The other thing that needs to be figured out is how well does the repaired area get repaired? Some say it grows back 50% normal hair density. Is this good enough for a satisfactory cosmetic effect? Perhaps what might be interesting is just simply do the wounding with Verteporfin to barren areas of scalp without hair transplant surgery. Maybe this alone is suitable. The idea of removing grafts just to put them somewhere else just doesn't make sense to me. It's not a solution. Plus it's a lot of work and transection of some hair is nearly guaranteed. 

A better solution is to get something to regenerate it structurally. That and get something placed to grow new follicular units without it causing cell proliferation that becomes cancerous.  Rather than cloning hair and adding the grafts, I think the best solution is injection of hair forming cells because every time a hair needs to be grafted can damage or transect another hair organ beside it. 

1 hour ago, Fox243 said:

Yes, I know of two people who micro needled with Verteporfin (not visudyne) and a FAK inhibitor. Xenath on the scar research telegram and DrPhil in the discord to be precise. Neither had results unfortunately. 

Well this means most people who experience hair thinning then won't be able to be helped by these drugs. I had a degree of hope and now it's back to zero. Definitely won't be doing a hair transplant either. I guess I will need to be hopeful of cloning injections one day to fix the problem, hopefully before I'm dead.

What do you think is the most promising outfit for the possibility of hair cloning now?