Men Are Freezing Their Hair Follicles For The Future

[Melvin- Admin]

I'm sure most of you have heard about guys freezing their hair follicles, in hopes that some day hair cloning will become a reality. Thoughts?

Men Are Freezing Their Hair Follicles For The Future

[Dazed]

COOL (Pun intended)

[Tbcruz]

I read somewhere that cloning has happened and it was successful the problem was the direction on the hairs were erratic and they have developed something that is implanted with the follicle that helps with the direction and dissolves with time (gel) they said a year and half but also said it will be super expensive so idk  

[Melvin- Admin]

2 hours ago, Tbcruz said:

I read somewhere that cloning has happened and it was successful the problem was the direction on the hairs were erratic and they have developed something that is implanted with the follicle that helps with the direction and dissolves with time (gel) they said a year and half but also said it will be super expensive so idk  

Where’d you hear this can you post the source?

[Mycroft]

I understand the mindset here, but this seems like a cash grab. Firstly, we don't have anything resembling a concrete timeline on the cloning procedure itself, or even successful testing. Second, how old would a patient have to be before we couldn't find 100 viable follicles from their donor to clone? Something doesn't make sense here. Maybe I'm missing it.

[Gasthoerer]

58 minutes ago, Mycroft said:

 Second, how old would a patient have to be before we couldn't find 100 viable follicles from their donor to clone? Something doesn't make sense here. Maybe I'm missing it.

there is another thread about it, and I said exactly the same. 

[Aftermath]

Farjo is the director? I wonder if he’ll actually dense pack if he has an unlimited supply of hair🤔😂

[Aftermath]

4 minutes ago, transplantedphil said:

Given he wrote a chapter on dense packing in the Hair Restoration, An Issue of Facial Plastic Surgery Clinics book maybe he will finally nail it

"Dense Packing: Surgical Indications and Technical Considerations"

 

😂😂😂

[Melvin- Admin]

2 hours ago, Mycroft said:

I understand the mindset here, but this seems like a cash grab. Firstly, we don't have anything resembling a concrete timeline on the cloning procedure itself, or even successful testing. Second, how old would a patient have to be before we couldn't find 100 viable follicles from their donor to clone? Something doesn't make sense here. Maybe I'm missing it.

You bring up some valid points. I believe the thinking here is that donor hair is better at a younger age. I don’t know how they came to this conclusion or whether there is any scientific data to back it up.

[Aftermath]

Yeah I’d call it a cash grab, doesn’t make any sense to me either since there’s always going to be at least a few viable hairs for cloning. And surely they’d be better than hair that’s been cryogenically frozen. Plus, the technology isn’t there for cloning yet so you’re paying out the money and giving up hairs from your donor for something that may well never actually exist! Also, since it’s Farjos company, does that mean it’s be him doing the re-implanting of the cloned hairs? Baldness will be eliminated for sure... we’d just have a whole bunch of balding men instead of bald men😂 

[Mycroft]

Also, why would you have to do it again every few years to maintain the results? Aren't they basically cloning healthy hair follicles and grafting them to your scalp just like traditional hair transplantation? You don't have to get that redone every few years.

 

[Melvin- Admin]

These are all valuable questions. At this point, I don't think we have enough information. The idea sounds reasonable, but cloning would need to be close by.

[Tbcruz]

9 hours ago, Melvin-Moderator said:

Where’d you hear this can you post the source?

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/07/hair-for-all/594826/

[Melvin- Admin]

Hmm that's a good read. I'm gonna research this a little further and report back to you guys.

[Mycroft]

Okay, so this actually addresses the idea of why Farjo is saying it would need to be redone periodically, but it also suggests that they've figured out the cause of that flaw and how to avoid it in theory if not execution. Bernstein is actually making it sound like the longevity of it is the reason they haven't started more serious trials which...makes sense.

It seems like it would be prohibitively expensive for most people to do a transplant megasession every couple of years, which would mean the ROI for bringing this to market as a temporary fix wouldn't be as good. I'm sure most investors would prefer it NOT be a permanent fix and have people keep paying into it like the pharmaceutical solutions, but there's a certain point where it's too expensive even for that. Most of us probably consider the transplants on market to represent a significant expenditure, so imagine having to throw down that kind of money every couple of years for life.

[Al - Moderator]

20 hours ago, Mycroft said:

Also, why would you have to do it again every few years to maintain the results? Aren't they basically cloning healthy hair follicles and grafting them to your scalp just like traditional hair transplantation? You don't have to get that redone every few years.

 

 

I would imagine, just like a current transplant, if they are adding hair to where you are losing it, then in a few years you may need to add hair in additional areas of continued loss.

 

[Mycroft]

37 minutes ago, BeHappy said:

 

I would imagine, just like a current transplant, if they are adding hair to where you are losing it, then in a few years you may need to add hair in additional areas of continued loss.

 

But again, assuming the hair being taken is true DHT resistant donor hair to begin with, and they're taking a handful of follicles at a time to clone a batch, I cannot imagine a scenario where you're going to run out of hair unless your donor area was compromised and no good to begin with because it was always going to thin out.