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Many experts think a hair-cloning procedure, may be less than 5 years away.
Intercytex, a public company based in London, may be closest to a marketable product. Intercytex scientists have successfully grown large batches of cloned proto-hairs similar to those that other researchers have been struggling to keep alive.
What’s more, in animal experiments, the Intercytex team has observed cloned hair follicles growing hair again after the original hairs were plucked. This suggests that their cloned follicles cycle through the entire life span of hair—three phases known as anagen (growth), catagen (transitional), and telogen (resting)—something no other researchers have been able to do.
A key to the team’s success has been growing proto-hairs in a special medium, licensed from a Japanese inventor, which contains cultured skin cells known as keratinocytes.
Hair cloning will be pricey initially, so early adopters may be men who are not only wealthy, but also desperate because they don’t have enough hair left to do a follicular unit transplant. Cloning could also be ideal for younger men who aren’t good candidates for follicular grafting.
Nobody is sure how the actual cloning process will be implemented. Most surgeons speculate that they’ll use boring tools similar to the existing ones used for harvesting follicular units. The follicular units will be sent to centralized labs, where industrial incubators will mass-produce millions of follicle cells for a relatively low cost.
Another question is how will the cloned cells be transplanted? Instead of transplanting follicular units, your surgeon may inject cloned cells into micro-incisions, or he may implant lab-grown hair follicles. It could be fast, clean, and painless.
Whatever the outcome, choices will abound. In the future, hair cloning will coexist alongside follicular unit transplants, drug therapies, and emerging technologies still incubating in the labs.
This news is brought to your courtesy of Dr. Mark Bishara and The Paragon Med Spa
(817) 473-2120
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