It has been a while since I wrote about a celebrity fighting hair loss. And it is hard to believe that I have never written a post about 43-year-old retired US soccer legend and ex-captain Landon Donovan. Perhaps the most famous soccer player in US history.
Mr. Donovan has been fighting hair loss since the age of 18 when his hairline started receding rapidly. For almost his entire career, Mr. Donovan’s balding was as much the center of attention as were his soccer skills.
Landon Donovan: From Failed Hair Transplants to a Decent Hair System
In spite of getting several hair transplants, Landon Donovan has lost most of his transplanted hair as can be seen in the above image. He supposedly got one transplant to his frontal scalp region, and another to his crown region. The “permanent” donor hair in hair transplants that comes from the back of one’s scalp is not necessarily always permanent. There is no shortage of older people who have absolutely no hair left on their scalps, including in the so-called “permanent” zone.
Nevertheless, Mr. Donovan’s failed hair transplants seem especially egregious. Especially when considering that he got at least one of his hair transplants in 2024 (see bottom part of this post). How could there be no results in 2025? Did he just get unlucky and pick a terrible surgeon? Or was he wrongly advised to get very small procedures of 500 grafts? British soccer legend Wayne Rooney also had subpar results from his first hair transplant. But his second hair transplant seems to have lasted much longer.
In 2025, at the age of 43, Mr. Donovan started wearing a hair system to cover his barren scalp. It looks excellent in my opinion. Moreover, in December 2025, he teamed up with Absci (an artificial intelligence drug and biologic creation company) to help bring forth a cutting edge treatment for hair loss. This is the first ever instance of a hair loss celebrity partnering with a cutting edge biotech company that has a legitimate shot at bringing forth a hair loss treatment or even cure. Many celebrities have partnered with hair restorations clinics in the past after getting great hair transplant results.
Check out Mr. Donovan’s latest video interview from this week on Absci’s YouTube channel.
“For me its not vanity. It’s a disease and its something that we should be able to cure.” — Landon Donovan
In 2024, Mr. Donovan was widely mocked after a TV appearance in which his hair and scalp got all the attention. He later explained that this was due to his getting a hair transplant two weeks earlier and being re-assured that it would not show up on camera. This man has gone through it all when it comes to hair loss. And he is not keen to “just shave it off”, mirroring the preference of all the regular readers of this blog.
Landon Donovan is one of the very few celebrities or athletes that I now follow on X, and I doubt that I will ever unfollow him. He wants a hair loss cure, and is not at all satisfied with hair transplants, hair systems or head shaving for the long run.
This person is the perfect example of someone who doesn’t look good without hair, and unfortunately, I fall into this category. Some people are at least lucky enough to look cool.
On the topic of celebs; what did Elon Musk do to fully reverse his hair loss? This guy is worth nearly 1 trillion dollars, I’d imagine he’s got the funds to get whatever treatment he wants, even stuff thats currently in research. Did he pay a visit to Dr. Roland Lauster? Takashi Tsuji??
He paid a transplant surgeon, I believe I see grafts at his hairline at times. Anyone else?
I think he’s still good-looking bald, but I totally get wanting your hair back.
LeBron James is obviously just as insecure about his hair loss but radio silent. Wish these guys put some funding into issues for men that would really improve the quality of life for so many.
Unless I’m wrong, I don’t see any mention of him taking fin and min, which would be a strong indicator of why his transplants failed.
I believe we all feel his pain. We also deserve our Ozempic moment – something that finally truly works and let’s us experience again those days when hair loss wasn’t on our mind at all.
This journalist is calling it an Ozempic moment
https://www.drugdiscoverynews.com/can-hair-loss-be-the-next-glp-1-moment-16966
Certainly hope she is right. If we get a few hitters in the next years, that might also make these affordable for the ones with smaller budgets sooner.
Ozempic started at around $1000 per month and is soon below $100.
Honestly, one gets the impression listening to researchers from these companies that they are targeting AGA treatment as a relatively easy target to get a quick large cash injection that can then be used to fund related research on more serious diseases.
Win-win isn’t it? We are patients in a very fast growing, underserved market. Whoever is first finding a working treatment for us will certainly milk this cash cow. I hope we can benefit from this race soon. And from research partly funded by us in later years :D
Unrelated to this post but my derm referenced this paper. It says 81% of men with AGA who were unresponsive to traditional treatment had some level of autoimmune inflammation (different than the end stage AGA inflammation/scarring). After treating with traditional non-sterioid anti-inflammatory medication 67% of the 129 men saw improvement. This may be helpful for some of the people on the site to add a stronger anti-inflammatory to their stack: https://dru.com/video-read-this-if-your-hair-loss-treatment-or-hair-transplant-has-stopped-working-what-science-shows-hair-loss-stopped-responding-piilif-aga/
TP, I didn’t see the study itself on your link but was able to track it down (link below). Interesting the authors found such a a high likelihood of PILIF AGA endotype (81%!) in pts older than 44, Norwood 5+ and/or poor response to prior txt.
The anti inflammatory treatments they suggested would make sense if that is what is going on. I wonder though if the oral dutasteride which was added as part of the recommended txt stack in the two treatment response examples provided did a lot of the heavy lifting (Figures 4 and 5). Elsewhere in the paper they mention the (potential) anti inflammatory effects (IL-6 attenuation) in dutasteride that are not present in finasteride.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.2147/CCID.S548520#summary-abstract
I was interested and posted TP’s link on a Discord channel I’m on, one of the posters said it’s an “advertorial” for a product the Dr. sells, which seems totally bogus to me, link below:
https://gashee.com/
Well, one of the article summary seemed to push for anti-inflammatory topical meds like “tetracyclines, topical calcineurin inhibitors, and selected botanical agents”. The botanical probably refers to gashee but the others could be a jak like opzelura, calcineurin inhibitor like tacrolimus, or oral antibiotics like doxycycline. I’ve heard of all 4 of these before and gashee is quite a different product than the other two. Since the author mentioned other proven medical interventions for inflammation in scarring alopecia as well, I don’t think that discounts the study.
Yoda, thanks for the additional info. Disappointing to hear, but I guess explains why the study didn’t seem to be getting wider mention since publication. Would tend to agree the gashee is not going to do anything.
TP, I have heard of doxycycline being investigated by the HairDAO so maybe we’ll hear more about the efficacy of the other meds being investigated from less biased sources in the future.
“Therapy included topical calcineurin inhibitors (tacrolimus or pimecrolimus), oral tetracyclines (doxycycline or minocycline, 100 mg twice daily for up to six months), and topical or oral phytoactive anti inflammatory agents (Gashee®, FineTouch Laboratories Inc., California). Hormonal therapy included oral finasteride (1 mg/day) or dutasteride (0.5 mg/day) and oral minoxidil (2.5 mg/day for men, 1.25 mg/day for women)”.
I was hopeful that the advertorial would lead us to a credible treatment, today was one of those days where I had HUGE flakes that came off my head.
Timely to the PILIF conversation, received this today. Greco is the “godfather” of PRP, I had 4 sessions with him, didn’t do squat except lighten my wallet. I don’t think he’s a scammer however might present base case scenarios. I don’t think I’ll be a buyer but could change my tune.
https://www.grecohairrestoration.com/blog/is-your-scalp-suffocating-your-hair
Admin, he got a transplant procedure in 2024 but started to wear a hair system the following year? Was he able to determine the procedure was a fail that quickly? Was that his first and only?
In one of the links where he is speaking on video, he mentions a frontal procedure and a crown procedure.
Thanks, my ADD kicks in with the thought of watching that video. Hope you’re feeling better Admin!
He seems like a decent guy. I wonder how much he’s being paid by Absci.
Poor guy…I feel his pain…hope ABSCI or PP405 cure us.