Verteporfin HAIR REGENERATION HUMAN TRIAL Dr. Barghouthi *OFFICIAL THREAD

[davidn]

4 minutes ago, NARMAK said:

I completely get where you're coming from. Personally i find Matt Dominance the slightly better of the two. He actually does some solid informational videos and updates or hair analysis on some people at times, but just like Hairliciously he's making money from his content by being a "Hair Loss Consultant" and does unfortunately recommend sometimes places that may not be the best. That said, i actually think the fact he openly highlights hair mills and what to look for in a good hair transplant like soft singles etc. puts him well and above Hairliciously. 

Matt knew he got botched, and that's why he's open with his repair. I believe and people can correct me but he's had repairs via HLC who are reviewed on here and a bit in the grey zone, but also he went to Dr Mwamba too. So i don't think he's entirely bad, and actually a decent fellow overall. 

Hairliciously though is out and out a damn shill. He promotes his severely overpriced website to vulnerable guys. His hair transplants ridiculously unnatural and he went to the same place twice! Even after admitting they messed up. Also, he goes "Oh, the trials are posted by the Dr on a few hair loss forums" but as far as i am aware, from what Melvin has said, this is the only place and he didn't even mention it. He did however gladly take the posted images. He's a complete clown imo and promoted a hair mill with a giveaway. 

To end on as well, i don't think Matt says to save your hair at all costs, but his message in particular resonates to save your hair young because his loss was quite advanced. I think unfortunately the first hair transplant severely depleted his donor and he was left with a pluggy looking hairline that couldn't be fully repaired or softened to a natural base. 

He was repaired by Hattingen and Mwamba. He just went to Hlc for consultation, then Hattingen for FUT consultation and got repaired by Hattingen.

 

 

 

[NARMAK]

9 minutes ago, davidn said:

He was repaired by Hattingen and Mwamba. He just went to Hlc for consultation, then Hattingen for FUT consultation and got repaired by Hattingen.

 

 

 

Thanks for clarifying. I remember he had beard work done though, and i'm pretty certain that was at HLC and also further work done in the hairline too maybe? Not a lot, but could be wrong. It could have just been the beard transplant and then Dr Mwamba for further hairline work. 

[davidn]

34 minutes ago, NARMAK said:

Thanks for clarifying. I remember he had beard work done though, and i'm pretty certain that was at HLC and also further work done in the hairline too maybe? Not a lot, but could be wrong. It could have just been the beard transplant and then Dr Mwamba for further hairline work. 

Yeah I think so, and Hattingen punched out the multis in the hairline.

Edited October 2, 2022 by davidn
Aa

[Gatsby]

They are both cut from the same rock. Running competitions with a ‘free Turkish hair transplant’ as a prize is just straight out dangerous! 

[alopeciaphobia]

I think we can all agree Hairliciously should've credited Dr. Bargouthi or this thread.

But why spend more attention on these Youtubers than needed? Let's instead use this thread to talk about the exciting promising experiment that is FUE + verteporfin!

[Melvin- Admin]

1 hour ago, alopeciaphobia said:

I think we can all agree Hairliciously should've credited Dr. Bargouthi or this thread.

But why spend more attention on these Youtubers than needed? Let's instead use this thread to talk about the exciting promising experiment that is FUE + verteporfin!

Agreed, let’s stick to the topic at hand. In the end, we should all be helping each other out. 

[Tiger2050]

21 hours ago, alopeciaphobia said:

 

Edited October 3, 2022 by Tiger2050

[Magic City]

On 9/22/2022 at 2:16 PM, MrFox said:

So I wanted to comment on this post because I feel it has come up multiple times in the discord chat as well as on this forum. There is a lot of speculation around what efficacy this drug will have on existing scars, and there are definitely those that are solely interested in verteporfin for scar revision. I think the only credible information we have at this point is from the lead researcher on the Stanford studies,  Dr. Michael Longaker. I am highly skeptical of anybody saying it won't work, because no one has tested it in that capacity! I personally believe the researchers at Stanford have a much better understanding than all of us on the underlying mechanisms involved, and until there is proof to the contrary, I will continue to default to the research and information coming from them.

I have posted quotes directly from Dr. Longaker below: 

Quote from New York Times article:

"His imagination soared. He might be able to prevent scars with a few quick injections of verteporfin. And there was no reason to think he couldn’t go even farther. A patient who had a disabling and disfiguring scar could go to a surgeon who could dab the scar with lidocaine to numb the skin, cut open the scar, inject verteporfin around the edges, and close the wound. Would it reheal without the scar?" https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/22/health/surgery-scar.html

Another quote from an interview on radio health journal:

"This person lives a long time. Some people have many scars. So this would not only be an injection of Verteporfin when  the surgeon is closing the incision at the end of the operation, but now you can say, oh, what about all those other scars that have existed for a long time? So one could imagine lidocaine cream being put on the scar, or injection of lidocaine, come back in about 20 minutes and the surgeon excises the scar under local anesthesia in the office, and then injects Verteporfin and the closure, and then it's closed. So there's many, many, many millions of existing scars that could be revised." https://radiohealthjournal.org/advances-eliminate-scarring/

From Dr. Longaker's quotes, I think it is a reasonable to assume that he believes that excising existing scar tissue and injecting Verteporfin would cause the wound to heal in a similar manner. If we continue to have positive results, I definitely feel that is worth trying to excise a smaller existing scar, such as an FUE scar, and injecting Verteporfin.

Very interested to see what happens if an existing FUE scar is excised and then injected with verteporfin. Hopefully Dr Barghouthi will be able to try this if one of his patients is willing. Also, I know he mentioned during the latest chat with Melvin that he would be discussing verteporfin and sharing protocols with other doctors attending a conference soon so I wonder if we'll have more verteporfin trials from other doctors soon too. 

[sr1486]

On 10/4/2022 at 5:41 AM, Magic City said:

Very interested to see what happens if an existing FUE scar is excised and then injected with verteporfin. Hopefully Dr Barghouthi will be able to try this if one of his patients is willing. Also, I know he mentioned during the latest chat with Melvin that he would be discussing verteporfin and sharing protocols with other doctors attending a conference soon so I wonder if we'll have more verteporfin trials from other doctors soon too. 

I would 100% try this for my FUT scar. It’s big and ugly. 

[Square1]

Is there a timeline known when the other assessments of hair growth in this verteporfin-experiment will take place? Then I would know when to check in again

How will the final results be evaluated? I would guess in terms of new follicles / grafts removed as an indicator for % regrowth? Does dr. Barghouthi have similar experiments planned with verteporfin in the future?

[Carlos0]

So, I’ve been following this thread for several months now. Usually, I just come by to check on Dr.Barghouthi’s amazing trials and that’s pretty much it. But today, I wanted to share something That caught my attention on “RealSelf” just recently. 
 

So, apparently someone in the previously mentioned website commented something about  he allegedly having scar revision where he had some type of necrosis going on his skin and “Verteporfin” caused scarless healing with some redness on it and hair growing back. I’ll leave the link down if you are interested in checking it out. I am interesting in hearing other peoples thoughts if this is real or not.

So this is a picture he shared how he would normally scar. You can see it looks “hypertrophic”:

Up next, is how the area looked before having scar revision. And, how it looks after having mentioned procedure. 

There’s also a few interesting comments below where he took the time to answer. 
 

Here is the link guys: 

https://www.realself.com/review/scar-removal-scarless-healing-verteporfin-scar-revision

 

 

[MrFox]

On 10/11/2022 at 8:35 PM, Carlos0 said:

So, I’ve been following this thread for several months now. Usually, I just come by to check on Dr.Barghouthi’s amazing trials and that’s pretty much it. But today, I wanted to share something That caught my attention on “RealSelf” just recently. 
 

So, apparently someone in the previously mentioned website commented something about  he allegedly having scar revision where he had some type of necrosis going on his skin and “Verteporfin” caused scarless healing with some redness on it and hair growing back. I’ll leave the link down if you are interested in checking it out. I am interesting in hearing other peoples thoughts if this is real or not.

So this is a picture he shared how he would normally scar. You can see it looks “hypertrophic”:

Up next, is how the area looked before having scar revision. And, how it looks after having mentioned procedure. 

There’s also a few interesting comments below where he took the time to answer. 
 

Here is the link guys: 

https://www.realself.com/review/scar-removal-scarless-healing-verteporfin-scar-revision

 

 

I think this may be someone who tried multiple scar revisions with Verteporfin and was updating people on Telegram. He did use Verteporfin so this is promising. It's not the most controlled experiment, but that being said the skin really does look like the surrounding tissue, minus the redness. 

[sr1486]

So it’s been about a month since the last update pics? Hoping we will see some new ones soon!! 

[ijustbethinkin]

Im trying to tame my expectations but I truly think that we are looking at the 'cure' for hair loss here. There was earlier speculation that even if Vertoporfin was able to regrow 25%/50% then it would be essentially a cure but I think that with further testing on volume injected or repeated injections before  to find the ideal regrowth procedure that can get up to 70/80 or even 90% regrowth(the case above appeared to have regrown all the hair in the scar removed). I believe Vertoporfin has already proven its regrowth capability through animal and now human studies. Keep in mind that we have a firm understanding on exactly how it regrows hair by blocking scarring pathways. I envision a world soon where 2 or 3 transplants can fix the most severe cases of balding with little damage to the donor thanks to Vertoporfin blocking scarring and allowing new regrowth. 

Im not sure if other doctors are unaware of Vertoporfin or there unwilling to test it but I really truly hope this reaches mainstream media soon so more doctors can hear about this and hopefully soon begin trialing it in their clinics.

 

[TheManeMan]

On 9/20/2022 at 10:13 AM, xhomer said:

If this needs 0.24mg injection per removed graft and an average FUE transplant is 2000 grafts it is 480mg of medication that is injected in our body, is it not too much? what side effects can this cause in our body? I dont think such high dose have been tested or approved? does anyone know max dose approved for verteporfin? 

I'm curious about this too.

 

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

Doc?

[Magic City]

11 hours ago, ijustbethinkin said:

Im trying to tame my expectations but I truly think that we are looking at the 'cure' for hair loss here. There was earlier speculation that even if Vertoporfin was able to regrow 25%/50% then it would be essentially a cure but I think that with further testing on volume injected or repeated injections before  to find the ideal regrowth procedure that can get up to 70/80 or even 90% regrowth(the case above appeared to have regrown all the hair in the scar removed). I believe Vertoporfin has already proven its regrowth capability through animal and now human studies. Keep in mind that we have a firm understanding on exactly how it regrows hair by blocking scarring pathways. I envision a world soon where 2 or 3 transplants can fix the most severe cases of balding with little damage to the donor thanks to Vertoporfin blocking scarring and allowing new regrowth. 

Im not sure if other doctors are unaware of Vertoporfin or there unwilling to test it but I really truly hope this reaches mainstream media soon so more doctors can hear about this and hopefully soon begin trialing it in their clinics.

 

I am also trying to tame expectations and am also thinking that this is an incredibly promising treatment so far. I'm just very surprised that, seemingly, no other HT surgeons or hair researchers have jumped onto verteporfin yet despite it being FDA approved and the recent research papers showing that it yielded promising results in pig studies. Not to mention this telling human HT case study about the efficacy of the drug in hair regeneration and scar reduction. I appreciate this brilliant patient trial hasn't yet concluded and I know Dr Barghouthi wants to do a biopsy of the verteporfin area versus a control area for more objective results, but I wonder why there hasn't been more interest in verteporfin for hair restoration surgery. Even amongst the hairloss community online I'm not seeing stacks of interest in this treatment although I appreciate not everyone needs a hair transplant to get a good outcome. Hopefully more Doctors start to become interested in this treatment soon. I'm grateful that there is at least one doctor who has taken the bold step to do a trial and hopefully more will follow. 

[ijustbethinkin]

2 hours ago, Magic City said:

I am also trying to tame expectations and am also thinking that this is an incredibly promising treatment so far. I'm just very surprised that, seemingly, no other HT surgeons or hair researchers have jumped onto verteporfin yet despite it being FDA approved and the recent research papers showing that it yielded promising results in pig studies. Not to mention this telling human HT case study about the efficacy of the drug in hair regeneration and scar reduction. I appreciate this brilliant patient trial hasn't yet concluded and I know Dr Barghouthi wants to do a biopsy of the verteporfin area versus a control area for more objective results, but I wonder why there hasn't been more interest in verteporfin for hair restoration surgery. Even amongst the hairloss community online I'm not seeing stacks of interest in this treatment although I appreciate not everyone needs a hair transplant to get a good outcome. Hopefully more Doctors start to become interested in this treatment soon. I'm grateful that there is at least one doctor who has taken the bold step to do a trial and hopefully more will follow. 

I agree its quite off track to see how little interest there is considering the history of the hair loss community getting extremely hype about upcoming drugs and treatments  Even the new hyped drug right now Pyralutimide which promises to be as effective as finasteride, finasteride is extremely effective but its not gonna take someone whos NW7 to NW0. Vertoporfin has the potential to offer that and yet I am seeing much more excitement for the latter. Either way there will soon be massive financial incentive for the pioneer doctors that begin using this treatment in their clinic as soon as we get clinical evidence of regrowth so i believe there will be a turning point where its use spreads like wildfire.

[DrTBarghouthi]

Hi guys. Here is the update after 119 days (17 weeks). I continue to see distinct hairs around or within punched areas in the test areas across all doses. I continue to see clearly scarred areas in the control group. It is hard for me to track every single hair that grew before, some are indistinguishable but I am tracking any that seem within a scar and look distinctly shorter or still newer relative to surrounding hairs. I do think the 0.4 and 0.32 doses are best. If we look st zoomed out pics of both we can appreciate a difference in healing and possibly the contribution of new hairs giving better coverage and appearance in the test areas. The 0.24 dose did not heal as well in my opinion- possibly due to either the dose or because of using tumescent within the actual areas. It may have suppressed the mechanism somehow. I will keep up with the follow ups and would hopefully do a biopsy at 6 months. I think I will now need to test new doses within 0.4 and above or increase the concentration. I also need to find a more uniform injecting technique to establish great uniformity in injections. I will also proceed with injections in the recipient area and a linear scar injection. These are all still in the pipeline. 
 

 

 

 

 

[SkyeBelcher]

2 minutes ago, DrTBarghouthi said:

Hi guys. Here is the update after 119 days (17 weeks). I continue to see distinct hairs around or within punched areas in the test areas across all doses. I continue to see clearly scarred areas in the control group. It is hard for me to track every single hair that grew before, some are indistinguishable but I am tracking any that seem within a scar and look distinctly shorter or still newer relative to surrounding hairs. I do think the 0.4 and 0.32 doses are best. If we look st zoomed out pics of both we can appreciate a difference in healing and possibly the contribution of new hairs giving better coverage and appearance in the test areas. The 0.24 dose did not heal as well in my opinion- possibly due to either the dose or because of using tumescent within the actual areas. It may have suppressed the mechanism somehow. I will keep up with the follow ups and would hopefully do a biopsy at 6 months. I think I will now need to test new doses within 0.4 and above or increase the concentration. I also need to find a more uniform injecting technique to establish great uniformity in injections. I will also proceed with injections in the recipient area and a linear scar injection. These are all still in the pipeline. 
 

 

 

 

 

Wow. Just looking at the zoomed out 0.4T Vs Control, shows such a difference in scaring. Just a lot less noticeable, just a few areas around the red ones. Excited to see if this can be improved with higher dose or more uniform dosage. But as is, this looks super promising.

 

I wish you the best of look Dr. And thanks for sharing. 

[alopeciaphobia]

10 minutes ago, DrTBarghouthi said:

Thank you so much for including these shots! They give a much better big picture of the regrowth and scarring.

Was the top left photo taken from a different angle than the others? Itooks like it shows significantly better hair coverage, but it may be due to how the shot was taken.

Also very excited about the dosage increases and recipient area injections!

[Magic City]

56 minutes ago, DrTBarghouthi said:

Hi guys. Here is the update after 119 days (17 weeks). I continue to see distinct hairs around or within punched areas in the test areas across all doses. I continue to see clearly scarred areas in the control group. It is hard for me to track every single hair that grew before, some are indistinguishable but I am tracking any that seem within a scar and look distinctly shorter or still newer relative to surrounding hairs. I do think the 0.4 and 0.32 doses are best. If we look st zoomed out pics of both we can appreciate a difference in healing and possibly the contribution of new hairs giving better coverage and appearance in the test areas. The 0.24 dose did not heal as well in my opinion- possibly due to either the dose or because of using tumescent within the actual areas. It may have suppressed the mechanism somehow. I will keep up with the follow ups and would hopefully do a biopsy at 6 months. I think I will now need to test new doses within 0.4 and above or increase the concentration. I also need to find a more uniform injecting technique to establish great uniformity in injections. I will also proceed with injections in the recipient area and a linear scar injection. These are all still in the pipeline. 
 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the update, continues to look very promising. In the zoomed out pictures, is it the control sites on the left and the test sites on the right? If so, the results like good so far in verteporfin areas compared to control. 

[Fox243]

This is an amazing update. @Melvin- ModeratorI was wondering if any hair transplant surgeons had shown interest in collaborating with Dr. Barghouthi. I'm not sure how many surgeons know about this, but if we could somehow reach out to multiple surgeons to come up with their own version of a protocol and test many things (i.e. on a linear scar, in the recipient area, with different methods of injections/dosage/concentration), we could take the onus off Dr. Barghouthi; I think we could get a definitive result about the best way to use verteporfin and make it mainstream in clinics. This is a doc I've written up (along with some wonderful edits from community members) as an intro to vert: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s3JkF9woMIebkXbpE_UxrjBfNy9i7AuBclDqn9HGrAo/edit.

Edited October 16, 2022 by Fox243

[Magic City]

13 minutes ago, Fox243 said:

This is an amazing update. @Melvin- ModeratorI was wondering if any hair transplant surgeons had shown interest in collaborating with Dr. Barghouthi. I'm not sure how many surgeons know about this, but if we could somehow reach out to multiple surgeons to come up with their own version of a protocol and test many things (i.e. on a linear scar, in the recipient area, with different methods of injections/dosage/concentration), we could take the onus off Dr. Barghouthi; I think we could get a definitive result about the best way to use verteporfin and make it mainstream in clinics. This is a doc I've written up as an intro to vert: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s3JkF9woMIebkXbpE_UxrjBfNy9i7AuBclDqn9HGrAo/edit.

 Couldn't agree more. Great write up document too. 

[Ganderson]

There just hasn’t been anything in the hair loss world that has come close to this kind of progress In the last 10 years. 
 

i don’t know how to quantify these results. 50% improvement ? To scarring vs regrowth ?

 

are the scars less shiny here or have some melanin? If either are a yes, SMP for FUE scar camoflauge becomes a very different ball game… 

this is only trial one? I wonder how this will look after 50 experiments … 

 

man I don’t know. I’m trying not to get too excited but when I look at this … makes me think a cure is on the horizon. Is that nuts? 

[alopeciaphobia]

1 hour ago, Fox243 said:

This is an amazing update. @Melvin- ModeratorI was wondering if any hair transplant surgeons had shown interest in collaborating with Dr. Barghouthi. I'm not sure how many surgeons know about this, but if we could somehow reach out to multiple surgeons to come up with their own version of a protocol and test many things (i.e. on a linear scar, in the recipient area, with different methods of injections/dosage/concentration), we could take the onus off Dr. Barghouthi; I think we could get a definitive result about the best way to use verteporfin and make it mainstream in clinics. This is a doc I've written up (along with some wonderful edits from community members) as an intro to vert: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s3JkF9woMIebkXbpE_UxrjBfNy9i7AuBclDqn9HGrAo/edit.

Amazing writeup and also I think it's a fantastic idea to leverage this forum's close relations with practitioners worldwide to find more surgeons willing to experiment on a wide variety of parameters and hypotheses related to verteporfin. I hope @Melvin- Moderator can make something work.

One challenge I can foresee would be sourcing the verteporfin. Apparently there have been some major supply chain issues around the drug.

I heard from another user that there initially was a discord group attempting to source it. Perhaps that could be a valuable connection in setting up more experiments.

Edited October 16, 2022 by alopeciaphobia