Verteporfin HAIR REGENERATION HUMAN TRIAL Dr. Barghouthi *OFFICIAL THREAD

[Hairgain]

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.

[Hairgain]

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.

[Fabio69]

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

Edited May 4, 2023 by Fabio69

[Hairgain]

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."

[MrFox]

On 5/4/2023 at 10:29 PM, Hairgain said:

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."

Well, it seems like one of them is with the YouTube channel The Hair Chemist, it seems like he is going to track his experience with it. 

Edited May 7, 2023 by MrFox

[alopeciaphobia]

I'm very interested as to how @DrTBarghouthi is going to dose verteporfin for FUT. Applying it to a sutured FUT site would be linear, rather than an area, so the dosage would have to be in mg/cm rather than mg/cm².

[Jonathan]

6 hours ago, alopeciaphobia said:

I'm very interested as to how @DrTBarghouthi is going to dose verteporfin for FUT. Applying it to a sutured FUT site would be linear, rather than an area, so the dosage would have to be in mg/cm rather than mg/cm².

I think Dr Bargouthi is still doing FUE, or has that changed?

[Hairgain]

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. 

Edited May 8, 2023 by Hairgain

[MrFox]

11 hours ago, Jonathan said:

I think Dr Bargouthi is still doing FUE, or has that changed?

I believe he is assisting another surgeon in an FUT case. 

[Fabio69]

9 hours ago, Hairgain said:

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. 

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.

Edited May 8, 2023 by Fabio69

[Jonathan]

1 hour ago, MrFox said:

I believe he is assisting another surgeon in an FUT case. 

I think that’s additional, since we reached the $15k goal I’m pretty sure he’s doing another trail with FUE with higher dosages than before.

[Square1]

11 hours ago, Hairgain said:

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. 

The enthusiasm is great, but let's not be overdemanding of dr. Barghouthi. Besides running these experiments, he has a clinic to run, a private life etc. etc.

I am much less optimistic about these sci-fi treatments as they are years / decades way with a high possibility of failure. Even if one of them makes it, they will take you to the bank to get it. Most won't be able to afford it. Verteporfin has the same promise (a full head of hair) but way quicker, cheaper, less artificial and safer. And it has some pointers of working in humans.

The claim that Tsuji "has a cure" is one that I am very sceptical about. It has never shown any resemblance of working in humans that I am aware of. As he always fails to get investment, I think investors veel the same way.

[Hairgain]

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. 

 

[Fabio69]

5 minutes ago, Hairgain said:

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. 

 

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.

[Hairgain]

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.

[Fabio69]

19 minutes ago, Hairgain said:

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.

https://folliclethought.com/updates/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/medicalxpress.com/news/2022-10-san-diego-biotech-million-bald.amp

 

There is not much info on there other 2 main hair loss treatments compared to scube 3. But these 2 treatments are their main treatments not scube 3

[MrFox]

6 hours 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.

It may be that we get an effective treatment, such as verteporfin and then have less invasive treatments that follow. Regardless, its good to see some actual progress lately. 

[Hairgain]

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.

[mr_peanutbutter]

lets try not to derail this thread and focuse on verteporfin guys

 

 

[Mohamed Aloui]

On 5/2/2023 at 8:51 AM, Melvin- Moderator said:

Let’s communicate via pm, I’m gonna try and get this set up with Dr. Pittella. It would be interesting indeed, if a significant amount of hair grows back, it would be hard to refute. Of course, some will say its telogen hair that grew back. You can avoid this by shaving a few days before. Beard hair has a much shorter anagen cycle. Would it be possible to do it end of 2023? 

I have a surgery booked with dr felipe pitella  early September I would be happy to let him use verteporfin   On my scalp and beard. The only issue is that I’m not 100% sure I can collect the money to get the surgery. I’m about to get done w school in a week and I’ll be working my ass off from then until late august hoping I can get enough money to be able to at least afford 4000- 5000 graft. I already have some savings but I’m missing more than half the amount. I will let you know if I’m still going for the surgery this September. Otherwise I might reschedule it to a later date when I get the money and I will be still down for the trial.

[Rasputin]

On 5/9/2023 at 4:02 AM, Hairgain said:

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.

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? 

[Hairgain]

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. 

[Rasputin]

3 hours ago, Hairgain said:

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. 

 

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.

Edited May 10, 2023 by Rasputin

[Square1]

The idea that wounding + verteporfin would produce results isn't farfetched, it's what the authors of the original study (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba2374) did on mice. They noted the following:

Furthermore, we have shown that inhibition of YAP signaling prevents En1 activation during wound healing, thus encouraging ENF-mediated wound repair without fibrosis and with regeneration of secondary skin elements (hair follicles, sebaceous glands).

It is however unclear to me what "regeneration" in this context exactly means. When skimming through this abstract I got the idea that they simple mean that the hair came back after the wounding without being impeded by a scarring process. I would be hard-pressed to really call that regeneration though.

My idea of regeneration is that something that was, but disappeared, came back. In this case, follicles that were damaged / miniaturized by androgenetic alopecia or a similar condition returned in their un-miniturized form after the wounding. I am not sure if this is what happened here though.

 

[mr_peanutbutter]

29 minutes ago, Square1 said:

The idea that wounding + verteporfin would produce results isn't farfetched, it's what the authors of the original study (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba2374) did on mice. They noted the following:

Furthermore, we have shown that inhibition of YAP signaling prevents En1 activation during wound healing, thus encouraging ENF-mediated wound repair without fibrosis and with regeneration of secondary skin elements (hair follicles, sebaceous glands).

It is however unclear to me what "regeneration" in this context exactly means. When skimming through this abstract I got the idea that they simple mean that the hair came back after the wounding without being impeded by a scarring process. I would be hard-pressed to really call that regeneration though.

My idea of regeneration is that something that was, but disappeared, came back. In this case, follicles that were damaged / miniaturized by androgenetic alopecia or a similar condition returned in their un-miniturized form after the wounding. I am not sure if this is what happened here though.

 

mice dont have adrogentic alopecia though

 

however, interesting thought. should be tried out. since it doesnt work with the average 1.5mm microneedling device (see some replies a few pages before) medical assistance from a doctor would be needed

Edited May 10, 2023 by mr_peanutbutter