Q&A: Hair Multiplication/Cloning

Dear Dr. Mohebi-

I am 33 years old and have been dealing with thinning hair since I was 19. That is when I started on the medication to help with hair loss and it has helped slow down my hair loss. I also use concealers or camouflaging agents to help my thinning areas appear fuller and thicker. I have been watching for new treatments such as hair cloning to come to fruition and still hold out hope for that one day.

In the meantime I have thought about FUE but just do not have the resources financially to afford it. Do you think hair cloning will be a viable option in the future? What are my options in the interim? Thank you for any help or advice…and you would definitely be my doctor of choice for treatment in the future (hopefully for hair cloning!). Thanks again for taking the time to respond to my question!

Hair cloning has been studied and the results indicate that we can multiply hair in the lab or in tissue and use it as new hair for transplantation. Of course, hair multiplication (also known as hair cloning) could be a great option for many people who don’t have enough resources for restoring a full head of hair. That might be due to having a large balding area in comparison to the limited donor area, or poor quality of their donor hair. However, most people do not need to wait for hair cloning; current state-of-the-art hair restoration can give them a full head of hair.

We don’t know precisely when hair multiplication will be available for those who need it. The research has been slow and costly, and the main company that initiated the research of hair multiplication went out of business. If it becomes possible to clone hair, I don’t think it will be practical until eight to ten years from now. That is the amount of time any new medical procedure requires to complete phase III of its research process, which is when scientists perform tests (lasting eight to ten years) to make sure it won’t cause any long-term complications in patients (such as cancer, etc.).

We will keep our patients updated through our website, blog, and social channels if and when any new technique for hair restoration becomes available.

Hair Cloning News 2013

hair cloning Q:

Hello Dr Mohebi,

I recently read an article on the web that you commented on Harvard research for hair cloning. I am in my early 40’s, fairly broke, and eagerly awaiting the day that hair cloning is successful and available to the market. For the past decade, I keep hearing the same promises that it will arrive in 5 years, but still no luck. Can you comment on why it is not here yet, and perhaps when we will see it. Thanks in advance.

Hair multiplication also referred to as “Hair Cloning” is a hot topic in hair restoration over the last few years it is garnering more and more attention. The research for multiplying hair (hair cloning) has been going on for years now in several centers around the world over the past few years. The study that we performed with collaboration with some scientists in Cedar Sinai is only one of the many steps that need be taken to successfully multiply hair.

Hair multiplication would offer superior benefits to patients and represent a significant advance for medical science and hair restoration. Still the march towards this being a medical reality moves slowly for a several different reasons:

Although hair loss has detrimental effects on patients’ lives, is yet to be recognized as a burning issue in medical field to warrant more funding for hair loss research.
Hair multiplication studies are usually done in private setting without the support of larger institutions such as universities and NIH (National Institute of Health).
The growth rates of the hair stem cells are extremely slow in cell cultures. That makes the overall period of hair multiplication timelier and adds exponentially to the cost of these studies.

The combination of above three factors and other obstacles in this process has made progress of hair multiplication very slow. My best estimation of current research is that hair multiplication is probably at least 8 years away from practical medical application. The reason for this is that any new medical treatment or device needs to go through different phases to obtain FDA approval for its use in the U.S.

The last phase necessary in development of a new treatment is ‘clinical trials’. The phase three is done on volunteer patients to find out more about long term complications that might be associated with the treatment. At this time no study has reached the clinical trials stage this makes it unlikely that we can have hair cloning available to public within the next eight years.

What is new in Hair Restoration Surgery 2012

Report of ISHRS 20th Annual Scientific Meeting

OCT 17-20 2012– Atlantic City, Bahamas

The annual meeting of International Society of Hair Restoration Surgery is the most significant hair restoration meeting worldwide. This year’s meeting was one of the best in terms of the content of the information discussed. The meeting was held in Atlantic City, Bahamas.

Hair Restoration Surgery is evolving rapidly with newer technologies that enhance our understanding of hair growth and the tools that help us expect better growth. This year’s conference hot topics had five areas of focus. These topics are reviewed below:

Robotic hair restoration

ARTIS or Robotic Hair Transplantation was actively promoting its robotic arm that helps the surgeon to extract the FUE Grafts for hair transplantation. The Robotic hair transplant update for 2012 was not as significant as many attending physicians anticipated. Considering that the robotic hair transplant is being promoted and used in several offices actively for over a year, most surgeons expected to learn more about the scientific evaluations that can differentiate robotic procedures with other techniques of hair restoration.

The doctors who used robot in their offices in the last year discussed their personal experience with robotic hair restoration. Some discussed that the numbers of grafts have been improved, but there was not a significant evaluation on the quality of grafts to other methods of FUE hair harvesting or to compare the robotic grafts with grafts from strip hair transplants.

Stem Cell and hair multiplication

We have had a few discussions about new advancements in Stem Cell research in 2012. Some of the familiar faces gave lectures about the status of hair stem cell research and where we are standing on hair multiplication. At present it appears that no one has started the phase III level of research. In practicality this means we are unlikely to be able to have a way to multiply hair in the next 8 or 10 years. Until we hear the phase III level of hair multiplication studies are successfully completed our patience and our practices will be reliant on our present hair restoration methods.

FUE transplantation

Many doctors discussed the increased rate of FUE hair transplantations worldwide. However, comparing different countries, it is apparent presently FUE is being used mostly in Asia and Europe in comparison to the United States. I (Parsa Mohebi, MD) presented result of the study of the effects of delay in extracting follicular units on viability of FUE grafts. I have discussed the conclusion of our study on 3 patients in which FUE grafts were initially punched and then removed in 5, 30, 60 minutes and 4 hours.

This study was the only study conducted to compare the in-situ viability of the follicular unit grafts. The study showed that keeping the punched grafts in scalp longer than a few minutes may decrease the survival of the grafts. The results of this study may help the design of the next generation of FUE devices and robotic surgery to try to be more efficient with the time that grafts are punched and before they could be removed from the scalp.

Methods for improving the aesthetics of hair restorations

I had another presentation on the advantages and disadvantages of extracting hair from temporal areas. I have brought up the “Mad Scientist Phenomenon” which refers to the situations that hair transplant surgeons harvest maximum number of grafts from the donor area on the back and not take any hair from temporal areas in patients who have a high density of hair on the temporal areas. The thickness of hair on the temporal areas may undermine the drastic changes that a hair transplant may have on restoration on the front and top areas.

My Doctor Is Going To Clone My Hair

I met an internist friend today and he asked me whether or not I do hair cloning for my patients. Obviously my answer was no. He mentioned that Dr. X does offer cloning to his patients and in fact plans on doing it for one of his current patients. My comment is this: The field of hair transplant surgery is a buyer beware market; just like any other fields in cosmetic surgery.

I have heard many doctors calling themselves a pioneer on this and that technique. If your doctor told you that he or she is the inventor of some popular method, make sure to ask for a published article from him or her on the topic in a peer reviewed medical journal. In medicine, we don‚Äôt keep secrets. When any inventions are formulated they are presented in scientific meetings or published in peer reviewed journals.

Hair cloning (as it is being called by people) or hair multiplication has been studied extensively in America and Europe over the past few years. There are some reports on the success of culturing hair and making new hairs from one in animals and human. There are also claims that phase 3 of clinical trials has started, but we do not know much about the success of this procedure since we don‚Äôt have any published articles as of yet. We don‚Äôt know anything about the possibility of mass production of hair through hair multiplication nor its feasibility and safety on human.

It is very likely that hair multiplication will be available in the future, but as of now we can not make any comments on the timing and quality of it.