Verteporfin HAIR REGENERATION HUMAN TRIAL Dr. Barghouthi *OFFICIAL THREAD

[sansi]

In case verteporfin doesn't work on older FUE scars, probably this can be solution ?

Trial was done on hypopigmented scars.  "All 21 subjects exhibited excellent to complete repigmentation of more than 75% of the hypopigmented scars. More than 90% repigmentation was observed in 17 patients. The mean duration for repigmentation that the subjects were satisfied with was 5.5 months. No adverse effects or recurrence instances were observed. Motorized micropunch grafting is an effective and promising alternative treatment for repigmentation of hypopigmented scars."

SST. Skin seeding technology https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1346-8138.17216

[bigmistake]

23 minutes ago, sansi said:

In case verteporfin doesn't work on older FUE scars, probably this can be solution ?

Trial was done on hypopigmented scars.  "All 21 subjects exhibited excellent to complete repigmentation of more than 75% of the hypopigmented scars. More than 90% repigmentation was observed in 17 patients. The mean duration for repigmentation that the subjects were satisfied with was 5.5 months. No adverse effects or recurrence instances were observed. Motorized micropunch grafting is an effective and promising alternative treatment for repigmentation of hypopigmented scars."

SST. Skin seeding technology https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/1346-8138.17216

Which doctor is going to be willing to do this. More importantly which doctor will not botch this up ? 

If your going to do FUE in donor scars then might as well get body hair into FUE scars or SMP if it won't fade from scars.

[Gwazi]

@DrTBarghouthi Hey doctor! Are you still going to look into injecting verteporfin after microneedling or damaging dormant hair follicles in some other way? I’m extremely interested in the potential for Verteporfin to be able to regenerate hair without a hair transplant. Sorry if this was previously asked in this thread. Also, do you think it will work or not? Thanks!

[ijustbethinkin]

23 hours ago, Gwazi said:

@DrTBarghouthi Hey doctor! Are you still going to look into injecting verteporfin after microneedling or damaging dormant hair follicles in some other way? I’m extremely interested in the potential for Verteporfin to be able to regenerate hair without a hair transplant. Sorry if this was previously asked in this thread. Also, do you think it will work or not? Thanks!

With the mechanism of this drug, it doesnt send hair through cycles of regrowth like Min/fin, it wont work with microneedling. It theoretically regrowths whatever is there prior to physical damage to the area i.e a miniturised follicle. Also if you are willing to microneedle so deep that it will potentially cause scar tissue to destroy a follicle... at that point just get a hair transplant. Also even if no scar tissue at all is formed you will have to be on heavy medication forever to maintain your newly grown hair when you could just get a transplant of DHT resistant hairs... we are like two step approach away from a cure like model for hair loss and the people advocating for this want to add an extra 5 steps to consider i dont get it at all

[LandWhale]

46 minutes ago, ijustbethinkin said:

With the mechanism of this drug, it doesnt send hair through cycles of regrowth like Min/fin, it wont work with microneedling. It theoretically regrowths whatever is there prior to physical damage to the area i.e a miniturised follicle. Also if you are willing to microneedle so deep that it will potentially cause scar tissue to destroy a follicle... at that point just get a hair transplant. Also even if no scar tissue at all is formed you will have to be on heavy medication forever to maintain your newly grown hair when you could just get a transplant of DHT resistant hairs... we are like two step approach away from a cure like model for hair loss and the people advocating for this want to add an extra 5 steps to consider i dont get it at all

It's good that the doctors test Verteporfin combined with hair transplants first. I don't think anyone have an issue with that, but there is obviously a huge market for regrowing lost hair as well. I personally consider wounding + verteporfin superior if it actually works, and the guy who regrew most of his hair after a burn accident proves that there might be a mechanism that can make it work.

Some advantages (if it does work):
1) Potentially getting your natural density back
2) Getting your natural growth patterns back
3) Takes way less time to regrow your hair
3) Can address retrograde alopecia and DUPA

Disadvantages:
1) You will likely have to be on aggressive treatments to retain the results

[ijustbethinkin]

9 hours ago, LandWhale said:

It's good that the doctors test Verteporfin combined with hair transplants first. I don't think anyone have an issue with that, but there is obviously a huge market for regrowing lost hair as well. I personally consider wounding + verteporfin superior if it actually works, and the guy who regrew most of his hair after a burn accident proves that there might be a mechanism that can make it work.

Some advantages (if it does work):
1) Potentially getting your natural density back
2) Getting your natural growth patterns back
3) Takes way less time to regrow your hair
3) Can address retrograde alopecia and DUPA

Disadvantages:
1) You will likely have to be on aggressive treatments to retain the results

There are a lot more disadvantages than just being on aggressive medication. One huge one as i mentioned is that you essentially need a 100% efficacy in blocking scarring for everyone who uses it if your using it on the top of the scalp otherwise you have caused permenant irrepirable damage to the area that even a hair transplant now cant come in and fix.

We can accept a significant amount of FUE scarring if Vert doesnt work 100%, no one cares that much about some dot scars on the back of their heads as shown by the huge influx of people who get FUE but significant scarring on the top of the head is obviously a big no no. I would even go so far as to argue that it would be unethical for a doctor to test this on people as you're risking causing icepick scars all over the top of their head. but hey if you eventually want to volunteer your head to try this out, more power to you.

Edited April 20 by ijustbethinkin

[Gwazi]

11 hours ago, ijustbethinkin said:

With the mechanism of this drug, it doesnt send hair through cycles of regrowth like Min/fin, it wont work with microneedling. It theoretically regrowths whatever is there prior to physical damage to the area i.e a miniturised follicle. Also if you are willing to microneedle so deep that it will potentially cause scar tissue to destroy a follicle... at that point just get a hair transplant. Also even if no scar tissue at all is formed you will have to be on heavy medication forever to maintain your newly grown hair when you could just get a transplant of DHT resistant hairs... we are like two step approach away from a cure like model for hair loss and the people advocating for this want to add an extra 5 steps to consider i dont get it at all

The mechanism of this drug literally just regenerates skin and tissue and follicles instead of letting it scar. Saying "the mechanism of this drug would make injection after microneedling not work" is just blatantly false. According to the mechanism of this drug, it should work. Not to mention people on RealSelf have reported using this drug to "cure" their scars, and it works perfectly. Even on older scars. There isn't even a trace of scar left. So if we destroyed the dormant hair follicles, and used Verteporfin, it would regenerate a hair follicle. You said it would probably just regenerate a miniaturized hair follicle. But why? That doesn't make sense. If it is completely regenerating a hair follicle, why would the new hair follicle come back already killed by DHT? No, it would more likely come back as a new hair follicle that is DHT sensitive and can in the future miniaturize again assuming you aren't on meds. But it would probably come back as a new hair follicle. 

 

What don't you get? I am way more hopeful for this than verteporfin after a hair transplant because I would prefer to get my original hairline and density back instead of a hair transplant which will look worse! This would be so much easier and cheaper than a hair transplant, and assuming it works, much better too

[ijustbethinkin]

31 minutes ago, Gwazi said:

The mechanism of this drug literally just regenerates skin and tissue and follicles instead of letting it scar. Saying "the mechanism of this drug would make injection after microneedling not work" is just blatantly false. According to the mechanism of this drug, it should work. Not to mention people on RealSelf have reported using this drug to "cure" their scars, and it works perfectly. Even on older scars. There isn't even a trace of scar left. So if we destroyed the dormant hair follicles, and used Verteporfin, it would regenerate a hair follicle. You said it would probably just regenerate a miniaturized hair follicle. But why? That doesn't make sense. If it is completely regenerating a hair follicle, why would the new hair follicle come back already killed by DHT? No, it would more likely come back as a new hair follicle that is DHT sensitive and can in the future miniaturize again assuming you aren't on meds. But it would probably come back as a new hair follicle. 

 

What don't you get? I am way more hopeful for this than verteporfin after a hair transplant because I would prefer to get my original hairline and density back instead of a hair transplant which will look worse! This would be so much easier and cheaper than a hair transplant, and assuming it works, much better too

If you feel this confidently then please try it out yourself  You can source Vertoporfin as many individuals have and Microneedle your scalp so deeply you scar your head and see what happens. No need to waste a Hair transplant doctors time/reputation with this. 

[LandWhale]

26 minutes ago, ijustbethinkin said:

If you feel this confidently then please try it out yourself  You can source Vertoporfin as many individuals have and Microneedle your scalp so deeply you scar your head and see what happens. No need to waste a Hair transplant doctors time/reputation with this. 

The doctor have previously stated that he is interested in eventually trying to wound the recipient area combined with Verteporfin. He is of course free to change his mind about this.

You are the one that for some reason is trying to prevent these experiments from doing done. None of the people who prefer recipient area wounding + Verteporfin is trying to prevent the hair transplant experiments from being done. 

Let's first see if Verteporfin indeed regenerate hair in the latest hair transplant experiments. If it does, then it should be noted that there are many people who would prefer a protocol to regrow their native hairs instead. Then we as community would have to figure out what the best wounding method is for maximizing hair regrowth while minimizing the potential for scarring. 

Edited April 20 by LandWhale

[Dragonsphere]

1 hour ago, Gwazi said:

The mechanism of this drug literally just regenerates skin and tissue and follicles instead of letting it scar. Saying "the mechanism of this drug would make injection after microneedling not work" is just blatantly false. According to the mechanism of this drug, it should work. Not to mention people on RealSelf have reported using this drug to "cure" their scars, and it works perfectly. Even on older scars. There isn't even a trace of scar left. So if we destroyed the dormant hair follicles, and used Verteporfin, it would regenerate a hair follicle. You said it would probably just regenerate a miniaturized hair follicle. But why? That doesn't make sense. If it is completely regenerating a hair follicle, why would the new hair follicle come back already killed by DHT? No, it would more likely come back as a new hair follicle that is DHT sensitive and can in the future miniaturize again assuming you aren't on meds. But it would probably come back as a new hair follicle. 

 

What don't you get? I am way more hopeful for this than verteporfin after a hair transplant because I would prefer to get my original hairline and density back instead of a hair transplant which will look worse! This would be so much easier and cheaper than a hair transplant, and assuming it works, much better too

Microneedling doesn't cause scarring. You would need to either remove the hair entirely or a significant portion of it for hair to grow back. Thinking that you can inject verteporfin, dermaroll and go from a noorwood 7 to a juvenile hair it utterly assign. Potentially, if you create a significant amount of trauma to the scalp and then inject verteporfin I suppose in that scenario it could work. However as @ijustbethinkin said this will almost likely cause some degree fibrosis making hair transplantation in that area impossible in the future.  

1 hour ago, ijustbethinkin said:

If you feel this confidently then please try it out yourself  You can source Vertoporfin as many individuals have and Microneedle your scalp so deeply you scar your head and see what happens. No need to waste a Hair transplant doctors time/reputation with this. 

Open forums are always good for discourse as people can share theories and speculations. A downside is as they are open, anyone can join. This results in many desperate people, ignorant in regards to the basics of hairloss and verteporfin's mechanisms making these suggestions. As you have said it is an easy experiment to do and I hope someone eventually does do it and when the results are mediocre as best, it finally will be put to an end.  Of course they will never contribute anything financially towards this endeavour or put their own scalps on the line. That is the non-arbitrary line they will not cross. 

Edited April 20 by Dragonsphere

[Gwazi]

39 minutes ago, Dragonsphere said:

Microneedling doesn't cause scarring. You would need to either remove the hair entirely or a significant portion of it for hair to grow back. Thinking that you can inject verteporfin, dermaroll and go from a noorwood 7 to a juvenile hair it utterly assign. Potentially, if you create a significant amount of trauma to the scalp and then inject verteporfin I suppose in that scenario it could work. However as @ijustbethinkin said this will almost likely cause some degree fibrosis making hair transplantation in that area impossible in the future.  

Open forums are always good for discourse as people can share theories and speculations. A downside is as they are open, anyone can join. This results in many desperate people, ignorant in regards to the basics of hairloss and verteporfin's mechanisms making these suggestions. As you have said it is an easy experiment to do and I hope someone eventually does do it and when the results are mediocre as best, it finally will be put to an end.  Of course they will never contribute anything financially towards this endeavour or put their own scalps on the line. That is the non-arbitrary line they will not cross. 

Ah yes, we are the ones who have no idea what we are talking about. Totally not the guy who can’t even simply google “can microneedling deeper than 1.5 mm damage hair follicles?” (The answer is yes). How in the world am I ignorant to verteporfins mechanisms and the basics of hairloss? As stated previously, Dr Barghouthi said he was interested in testing this out. He’s literally the one pioneering verteporfin for hair transplants right now but you are gonna claim he doesn’t know how the mechanism works? 

 

As you said, if you can damage the hair follicle enough, then potentially verteporfin can regrow it. Well there you go. Glad you were able to figure out what the whole point of the experiment would be. If you are such a verteporfin expert please enlighten us on why it wouldn’t be able to regenerate dormant hair follicles if you were able to damage them enough. 
 

Also, verteporfin blocks scarring allowing your skin and tissue to regenerate. Yet if we try microneedling and injecting it, apparently we will be left with permanent scarring? At this point you are just pretty much arguing that Verteporfin doesn’t work for wound healing either, which we know to be false. You can go look at the few cases studies on RealSelf to see it working 

 

Anyways, you aren’t a scientist or a doctor, so not sure why the heck you are in here trying to discourage Dr Barghouthi from doing that experiment that he already said he is interested in

[Dragonsphere]

38 minutes ago, Gwazi said:

Ah yes, we are the ones who have no idea what we are talking about. Totally not the guy who can’t even simply google “can microneedling deeper than 1.5 mm damage hair follicles?” (The answer is yes). How in the world am I ignorant to verteporfins mechanisms and the basics of hairloss? As stated previously, Dr Barghouthi said he was interested in testing this out. He’s literally the one pioneering verteporfin for hair transplants right now but you are gonna claim he doesn’t know how the mechanism works? 

 

As you said, if you can damage the hair follicle enough, then potentially verteporfin can regrow it. Well there you go. Glad you were able to figure out what the whole point of the experiment would be. If you are such a verteporfin expert please enlighten us on why it wouldn’t be able to regenerate dormant hair follicles if you were able to damage them enough. 
 

Also, verteporfin blocks scarring allowing your skin and tissue to regenerate. Yet if we try microneedling and injecting it, apparently we will be left with permanent scarring? At this point you are just pretty much arguing that Verteporfin doesn’t work for wound healing either, which we know to be false. You can go look at the few cases studies on RealSelf to see it working 

 

Anyways, you aren’t a scientist or a doctor, so not sure why the heck you are in here trying to discourage Dr Barghouthi from doing that experiment that he already said he is interested in

This is what you would call an appeal to authority fallacy, coupled with a strawman. 

My second to last post on this forum talked about dermarolling, the depth of miniaturized follicles and why I don't recommend it. I have never said it doesn't damage follicles. However as the average miniaturised follicle is only 0.65mm deep and most people derma roll around 1 -1.5mm, trauma to the follicle is caused. Almost certainly this trauma is very mild as we have yet to receive reports of permeant damage. The trauma will not be enough, however, to cause any appreciable improvement with Verteporfin. Please point me to the post on Realself proving me wrong. 

In regards to Dr Bargouthi, please could you kindly show me this posts and where he states that it will result in the 'the original hairline and density back' are you so enthusiastically believe. 

Edited April 20 by Dragonsphere

[LandWhale]

38 minutes ago, Dragonsphere said:

This is what you would call an appeal to authority fallacy, coupled with a strawman. 

My second to last post on this forum talked about dermarolling, the depth of miniaturized follicles and why I don't recommend it. I have never said it doesn't damage follicles. However as the average miniaturised follicle is only 0.65mm deep and most people derma roll around 1 -1.5mm, trauma to the follicle is caused. Almost certainly this trauma is very mild as we have yet to receive reports of permeant damage. The trauma will not be enough, however, to cause any appreciable improvement with Verteporfin. Please point me to the post on Realself proving me wrong. 

In regards to Dr Bargouthi, please could you kindly show me this posts and where he states that it will result in the 'the original hairline and density back' are you so enthusiastically believe. 

He simply said that he was interested in conducting the experiments. 

here is one clip where he said he's interested in testing Verteporfin in a completely bald area: https://youtu.be/-5yn_v6AeWw?t=1055.

I also remember it being discussed in this video, but it's too long to find the exact timestamp, maybe some other members remember the exact timestamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydyvBRa3GI4

Edited April 20 by LandWhale

[Gwazi]

43 minutes ago, Dragonsphere said:

This is what you would call an appeal to authority fallacy, coupled with a strawman. 

My second to last post on this forum talked about dermarolling, the depth of miniaturized follicles and why I don't recommend it. I have never said it doesn't damage follicles. However as the average miniaturised follicle is only 0.65mm deep and most people derma roll around 1 -1.5mm, trauma to the follicle is caused. Almost certainly this trauma is very mild as we have yet to receive reports of permeant damage. The trauma will not be enough, however, to cause any appreciable improvement with Verteporfin. Please point me to the post on Realself proving me wrong. 

In regards to Dr Bargouthi, please could you kindly show me this posts and where he states that it will result in the 'the original hairline and density back' are you so enthusiastically believe. 

Bro accuses me of using a strawman then in the same message acts like I said that Verteporfin will definitely 100% bring the original hairline and density back. 

 

Dr. Barghouthi has stated that he wants to test injecting it into completely bald areas. If verteporfins mechanism of action made that impossible, then barghouthi wouldn’t waste time and money trying it

[LandWhale]

56 minutes ago, LandWhale said:

He simply said that he was interested in conducting the experiments. 

here is one clip where he said he's interested in testing Verteporfin in a completely bald area: https://youtu.be/-5yn_v6AeWw?t=1055.

I also remember it being discussed in this video, but it's too long to find the exact timestamp, maybe some other members remember the exact timestamp: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ydyvBRa3GI4

I found the timestamp for the second video: https://youtu.be/ydyvBRa3GI4?t=2630

Edited April 20 by LandWhale

[Gwazi]

10 minutes ago, LandWhale said:

I found the timestamp for the second video: https://youtu.be/ydyvBRa3GI4?t=2630

Good job finding that. When was the 2nd FUE trial started? Looks like he will probably try that after this current FUE trial. So I got my answer to my original question 

[LandWhale]

15 minutes ago, Gwazi said:

Good job finding that. When was the 2nd FUE trial started? Looks like he will probably try that after this current FUE trial. So I got my answer to my original question 

According to Dr. Barghouthi's previous post, the 2nd FUE trial started around March 20th of this year.

[CureSeeker]

There are a lot of people in this thread claiming to know how verteporfin treatment will work and even how the potential follicles will behave, despite it never being tested. If it hasn't been tested, you do not know. That's literally why we do tests.

At any rate, I've procured some verteporfin and will be starting my own test on myself this week (deep microneedling of the thinning area).

[Fox243]

59 minutes ago, CureSeeker said:

There are a lot of people in this thread claiming to know how verteporfin treatment will work and even how the potential follicles will behave, despite it never being tested. If it hasn't been tested, you do not know. That's literally why we do tests.

At any rate, I've procured some verteporfin and will be starting my own test on myself this week (deep microneedling of the thinning area).

Would you also be trying a bald area (i.e. temples)? It's quite possible microneedling works without verteporfin on thinning areas.

[sansi]

hi @Killian, I believe it's been +2months after your surgery. 

We all would be grateful if you share some updates with us. How's the healing progressing so far ?

[CureSeeker]

12 minutes ago, Fox243 said:

Would you also be trying a bald area (i.e. temples)? It's quite possible microneedling works without verteporfin on thinning areas.

I've tried microneedling in the past without success, in both areas.

[Gwazi]

6 hours ago, CureSeeker said:

I've tried microneedling in the past without success, in both areas.

You’ve tried microneedling and injecting verteporfin already or you tried just microneeeling deeply?

[CureSeeker]

Just now, Gwazi said:

You’ve tried microneedling and injecting verteporfin already or you tried just microneeeling deeply?

Just microneedling

[Dragonsphere]

Verteporfin works as a Yap inhibitor, so we do have fairly good understanding of how it works. 

What we can all agree on is that there will be a sweet spot in terms of trauma. 

If you cut off your leg and inject verteporfin it is not going to grow back. 

Equally if you scratch balding areas of your head and then inject verteporfin that is not going to work either. 

There must be enough trauma to invoke regeneration but not to an extent that it disfigures the area, limiting the healing capability which results in fibrotic tissue. 

FUE does appear to fit into that sweet spot, maybe not so much FUT. 

Wounding into the recipient sites will probably work. Afterall, hairs are organs and DHT is damaging them. 

Essentially we need to find an equilibrium. 

An FUE instrument that minimise scarring (think what they use to extract beard grafts) done by a skilled surgeon is the way to go. 

Additionally, we need to have an understanding of the best dose to use, coupled with the regeneration rate. 

This can only be found out with the upcoming experiments. 

This does have it's place and can possible can be combined with FUE to enhance the results. 

Lets say if Verteporfin doubles the donor area, you could turn a Noorwood 7 into a Noorwood 2 with a thinned out crown. 

Wounding into that crown could then improve the density. 

Of course you will be required to take medication to prevent loosing this hair. 

Finding out the best dosage and what the regeneration rate is can be considered paramount before anything else. 

17 hours ago, CureSeeker said:

There are a lot of people in this thread claiming to know how verteporfin treatment will work and even how the potential follicles will behave, despite it never being tested. If it hasn't been tested, you do not know. That's literally why we do tests.

At any rate, I've procured some verteporfin and will be starting my own test on myself this week (deep microneedling of the thinning area).

Good luck with your experiment. Although you said it didn't work for you before, it might be sagacious to have a control site. Many things can prevent dermarolling from being successful, e.g., inflammation of the scalp which can come and go.   

Edited April 21 by Dragonsphere

[disvoltage]

On 4/20/2024 at 8:35 PM, CureSeeker said:

There are a lot of people in this thread claiming to know how verteporfin treatment will work and even how the potential follicles will behave, despite it never being tested. If it hasn't been tested, you do not know. That's literally why we do tests.

At any rate, I've procured some verteporfin and will be starting my own test on myself this week (deep microneedling of the thinning area).

Thank you for trying, every attempt is highly appreciated.

As far as I know, verteporfin requires some preparation before use (by injecting a liquid). If you are planning to test microneedling + verteporfin for more than one time, then you will probably have to store the diluted verteporfin (unless there is a way to dilute only a portion of the powder in the vial). If I am not mistaken, there are different storage conditions for verteporfin as a powder and as a liquid. There are also limitations regarding sun exposure, so you will probably have to cover the area or stay indoors for some time.

I am just throwing my 2 cents here hoping to help you during the planning phase. Good luck with your experiment!