FGF-9, George Cotsarelis, PGD2

Dr. George Cotsarelis Updates Us

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Recently, one of the blog readers sent me an e-mail stating that Dr. George Cotsarelis replied to him. I then decided to resend Dr. Cotsarelis an old e-mail to which I previously got no response. My e-mail was fairly generic and I asked him about updates on various key areas of hair loss research that he might still be doing.

George Cotsarelis Responds

The below is his reply from yesterday, which might just be a generic response that he sends to everyone (since the above mentioned blog reader also received a similar response):

Thank you for your interest in my research. Rest assured that we are continuing our work on hair follicle stem cells and hair follicle regeneration in the hopes of better understanding hair growth and developing treatments for hair loss.

Re PGD2R antagonists, Kythera, recently bought by Allergan, will be working on commercialization of these compounds for treatment of male pattern baldness.

Re FGF9, a small biotech company has licensed that IP and will be pursuing its commercialization.

My lab continues to work on developing novel treatments. The largest barrier is funding.

Sincerely,
George Cotsarelis, M.D.

Note that “PGD2R antagonist” is sometimes referred to as “PGD2 antagonist”, but these two phrases are not the same thing as the “R” stands for receptor. Thanks to the commenter who corrected my initial sentence.

FGF-9 is an important growth factor with hair growth benefits. I have made several posts in the past on various other fibroblast growth factors such as FGF-2, FGF-5 and FGF-7. Also see this interesting recent study on FGF-9 and wounding.

The PGD2 treatment route is far more interesting than the FGF-9 treatment route. My conclusion from reading Dr. Cotsarelis’ e-mail is that its best we focus on Allergen (Kythera)’s future announcements. We should avoid contacting the busy Dr. Cotsarelis regularly for any new information.

Double Hand Transplant, Zion Harvey

8-year-old Zion Harvey gets a Double Hand Transplant

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It was just announced today that 8-year old Zion Harvey became the world’s youngest recipient of a double hand transplant earlier this month. The surgery took place at The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia (CHOP) and was led by director L. Scott Levin, MD, FACS.

I found the story inspiring, but was not overly impressed with the science. We have read about a few dozen successful double hand transplant cases in recent years, so this was not a total surprise. Moreover, I have covered numerous other medical miracles in my once-a-month brief updates posts on this blog. e.g., a full scalp and skull transplant.

Most organ transplant cases are no longer a big surprise to me, even though they probably should be.

The Zion Harvey Story

Then I read that little Zion also has prosthetic legs. Apparently, he lost both his hands and feet at the age of 2 due to a sepsis infection. Then I read that he also had a kidney transplant from his mother at the age of 4 after two years of dialysis! This now makes this whole story an absolute miracle. After I saw the below videos on Zion, I had no choice but to immediately write a post about him, even though I never write two blog posts in one day.

In Zion’s case, acquiring donor hands that were a match was challenging and took some time. The surgical team had to consider factors such as blood type, size, skin color and gender. Dr. Levin estimated that no more than 15 potential donors per year are available in the US for such requests.

A three-year update from 2014 on the world’s first double hand transplant recipient is quite encouraging. An article on early stage prosthesis from the late 1800s was also published three days ago and is worth a read. Compare with prosthetics of today and we really do have a bionic revolution coming.

Also check out the new update from August 26, 2015.