Category Archives: Stem Cells

Hair Transplant, Stem Cells

New Hair Root Stem Cell Treatment from South Korea

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Hair Root Stem Cells
New hair root stem cell treatment for Gemma Hair Transplant Center (South Korea). Screenshot from the clinic video at the bottom of this post.

Last month, someone sent me an interesting link to a new type of stem cell based non-surgical hair growth procedure in South Korea. It is offerred by Park Kyung-won, director of the Gemma Hair Transplant Center.

It seems like the original English version of the article is no longer available. I initially used that one to write my post. Note that Gemma hair also has a blog on Naver.

Mr. Park has been offerring hair transplants and conducting hair loss research for almost two decades. Almost 15,000 hair transplant procedures have been perofmed at this clinic as of 2024.

South Korea is a world leader when it comes to cosmetic procedures and new experimental regenerative medicine treatments. In the world of exosomes, a South Korean company named ExoCoBio is making big waves in Europe. And of course we have all become familiar with CosmeRNA, the world’s first RNA-based cosmetic hair loss treatment. The number of South Korean companies involved in creating new hair loss products and treatments is particularly impressive.

New Hair Stem Cell Transplantation Process

This new stem cell based process was validated for efficacy at Hanyang University Medical School (South Korea) in 2023. Moreover, in October 2023, Director Park filed a patent application for “a method for promoting transplantation and growth after transplantation using hair stem cells.”

According to Park Kyung-won (in the original English version of the article):

“The larynx has relatively more hair than other areas and is immune to the ‘DHT hormone’ that attacks hair follicles,” he said. “We have succeeded in commercializing non-surgical treatment in Korea that injects hair root stem cells collected from the larynx into the hair loss area for the first time.”

He goes on to say that after just one stem cell transplant procedure, it is possible to activate resting hair follicles and make existing hair thicker.

The description of this process is a bit confusing due to the use of the word larynx, which is the internal voice box area near the middle of your neck. Does this really just mean the beard or body hair near your throat region?

Considering that this is in South Korea, I doubt that too many residents have dense beards running all the way down to the middle of their necks.

Update: In the Korean version of the article, they use the phrase “occipital area” area, and this makes more sense.

“The occipital area has relatively more hair than other areas and has immunity to the ‘DHT hormone’ that attacks hair follicles.”

Also confusing is that later on in the (original) article, it talks about extraction from the occipital region of the scalp. And the use of a 5cc activated blood solution, which they refer to as platelet-rich-plasma (PRP). Perhaps some of these issues are due to Korean to English translation of the interview?

Another vague statement:

“Stem cells proliferate on their own, so you only need to collect 100 to 200 hairs to plant 3000 hairs.”

Follicle Stem Cell Extraction Kits

Below is a new Korean video from Gemma Hair Tansplant Center. The last one-third of it has an Indian doctor named Dr. Surtakant who is from Cryobank Research Centre (India) talking in English. He discusses the increasing popularity of non-surgical follicle stem cell hair transplants in India. He specifically mentions these new stem cell extraction kits and their difference from PRP.

In 2023, Dr. Park partnered with Cryo Center (India) to increase the purity of stem cells. Since then, he has purchased ownership of the “stem cell extraction kit” developed by Cryo Center. Only high-purity stem cells remain after processing. I assume this Cryo Center is the same as the Cryobank Research Centre shown in the below YouTube video.

The efficacy of the kit was verified at Hanyang University Medical School (South Korea). According to Kang Joo-seop, a professor of pharmacology at Hanyang University:

“Tissue staining tests such as ‘H&E’ and ‘IHC’ were conducted on stem cell fluids extracted by kits, and a large amount of Sox-10 (embedded stem cell-specific expression antibodies) were found.”

He also states that the PRP type solution from these kits contains far greater amounts of stem cells than what was seen in past autologous hair stem cell therapy attempts.

As of February 2024, Director Park’s injection of hair stem cells has been administered in about 40 patients.

 

Pluripotent Stem Cells, Karl Koehler, Stem Cells

Hair-Bearing Skin Generated from Pluripotent Stem Cells

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Update: January 18, 2022 — Dr. Karl Koehler is covered in detail in the second half of a new article in MIT Technology Review.

“I think people will go pretty far to get their hair back. But at first it will be a bespoke process and very costly.”

Update: The podcast for the below news is here.

Pluripotent Stem Cells and Hair Growth

Yesterday a very important study was published in Nature Magazine. It is titled “Hair-bearing human skin generated entirely from pluripotent stem cells”. The scientists behind this research took 6 years to complete and publish their work.

The study has numerous co-authors from a few medical centers and universities based in the US. The lead author is Dr. Jiyoon Lee, while the correspondence author is Dr. Karl Koehler. The latter works at Boston Children’s Hospital as well as Harvard Medical School. Moreover, Dr. Koehler’s lab has its own site, on which he published a post about these findings.

Dr. Karl Koehler via Twitter

Pluripotent Stem Cells to Grow Hair
Pluripotent Stem Cells to Grow Hair. From Dr. Karl Koehler’s Twitter feed.

From Skin Organoids to Hair

In this latest research, undifferentiated human stem cells were successfully coaxed into developing skin-like organoids in vitro. When these human-derived structures were grafted onto immuno-compromised bald mice, the rodents produced robust (albeit shorter length) hair.

Note that in 2015, Dr. Alexey Terskikh and his team used pluripotent stem cells from humans to create dermal papilla type cells. These were then injected into hairless mice and grew hair.

Pluripotent Stem Cells Hair Growth
Pluripotent Stem Cells and Hair Growth — Nature Magazine.

In this new work, the scientists generated near-complete skin organoids first that ultimately resulted in pigmented hair. The skin cells grew in a sphere and were “fed” with various chemicals and growth factors (such as BMP4 and FGF2) for 4-5 months. Both the dermis and epidermis skin layers were grown successfully.

If this work goes through successful clinical trials, it will essentially mean a cure for hair loss. Nevertheless, the global media has largely ignored this research, with the UK’s Mirror being a notable exception. And as always, the Daily Mail too.

Cotsarelis Rises Again

Prolific blog commentator “MJones”‘ favorite hair loss researcher and fellow Alexander the Great progeny Dr. George Cotsarelis has been missing in action of late. However, this new research is so significant, that Dr. Cotsarelis and Dr. Leo Wang wrote a detailed article summarizing it in Nature Magazine.

Per the two doctors, this study represents a major step towards a cure for baldness in humans. They are confident that this research will eventually see its promise realized. This technique makes it possible to produce human hair without having to take any donor hair from the human.

Moreover, individuals who have major wounds, scars and genetic skin diseases will all benefit from revolutionary new treatments based on this research. That is if it comes to clinic of course.

In these times of pandemics, protests and riots, it is great to see Dr. Cotsarelis’ still unabated optimism. Ironically, for “MJones”, the glass has always been half empty.

Further reading: An excellent 2019 paper summarizing tissue engineering strategies for human hair follicle regeneration.