Hair Loss Cure 2020

Hair Transplant Front Before After AI Photo — Hair transplant in the front (two separate photos). Generated by AI using Bing Image Creator and DALL-E.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is all the rage in 2023. This is entirely due to the release of the ChatGPT (Chat Generative Pre-trained Transformer) chatbot from OpenAI in November 2022. Most people seem to already be impressed with this technology in its first iteration.

At the time of release, ChatGPT was based on OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 language model and only included information and data through 2021. This was since supplemented with the latest GPT-4 language model that was released on March 14, 2023.

Moreover, after Microsoft Bing added ChatGPT into its new search engine (only available on the Edge browser), the chatbot’s data includes the latest information from 2023. When used inside Bing, the chatbot also cites sources and references that it finds from the Bing search engine.

As the AI chatbot plus search engine battle accelerates, Alphabet (via Google) launched its own new Bard chatbot and Baidu (China) launched Ernie. Google is being more cautious with Bard in comparison to Microsoft with ChatGPT. It would be ironic if the global dangers of AI (and personal data collection) are ultimately in the hands of the Bing, Google and Baidu search engines.

Sure would be ironic if civilization ended because of a fight over browser/search market share
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) March 24, 2023

Everything is moving at breakneck speed, although I am not one to trust AI content without detailed verification on my part. On a related note, check out my 2021 post on Alphabet-owned DeepMind’s Alphafold protein database; and my 2022 post on artificial intelligence and drug discovery.

Bing Image Creator Just Launched

I was initially planning to write a post on ChatGPT and how it responds to questions related to hair loss. However, then something even more interesting happened:

On March 21, 2023 Bing launched the groundbreaking Bing Image Creator. It is powered by DALL-E, also from OpenAI.

The old adage is now updated:

“A (fake AI-created) picture is worth a thousand words.”

As Deepfake voice and video artificial intelligence technology continues improving, perhaps someone will create a new adage:

“A (fake AI-created) video is worth a thousand pictures.”

Watch this video on YouTube

Fake AI Generated Hair Transplant Before and After Photos

Over the years, I have seen numerous examples of hair transplant clinics using before and after patient photos from other clinics as their own. It is an epidemic according to some surgeons. Even when it comes to my own site, I regularly find other spammy sites plagiarizing and scraping my photos, logos, images and content.

But now we have Bing Image Creator that is free to use. No need to plagiarize photos from other people anymore. Moreover, other AI image creation software products (not free) such as Midjourney and Stable Diffusion already became popular in 2022.

The quality of these images is still subpar on some occasions. e.g., the below are two of the four images I got generated for “hair transplant before and after“. It seems like the AI prefers hair transplant results on the rear of the head for some reason! And it often puts the after result first, followed by the before.

Hair Transplant Before After AI Image — Hair transplant before after AI image using Bing Image Creator.

However, I have no doubt whatsoever that it is only a short time before these fake AI generated images become undetectable from the real thing. All of these technologies are constantly learning and self-improving from user feedback.

Moreover, if you vary the query in Bing Image Creator, the photos can become at least somewhat believable. At the very top of this post is one with the query “hair transplant in the front.”

Below are two results for the query “FUE hair transplant.”

FUE Hair Transplant AI Image — FUE hair transplant artificial intelligence Images.

To me, both of the above images seem like they are of real human scalps. Quite amazing if you are someone who is older than 30 years old in my opinion. Google was only founded in 1998, and the internet only started to became popular in the mid-1990s. Smartphones and faster speed internet access are yet more recent.

Inevitably, we will see numerous hair transplant surgeons and hair loss product developers use such “fake” photos. It will become impossible to discern truth from fiction. I would not be surprised if even some clinical trial before and after photos turn out to be doctored ones in the future.

Buyer beware (Caveat Emptor) is truer then ever before.

The most “natural” way of regrowing lost hair is via wounding or intentional injury. Hence the massive popularity of at-home microneedling and dermarolling for hair growth.

However, no-one truly understands the biology of wound healing spurred new hair follicle growth. We have been waiting for 15 years for Follica to come through.

Update: March 2023 — In vivo reprogramming of wound-resident cells generates skin with hair.

Update: February 2022 — Another interesting new study titled “Cellular Memories: More Than Skin Deep.” Co-author is Dr. George Cotsarelis.

June 21, 2021

Hair Follicle Mesenchymal Activity During Wounding Healing

I am updating this post because an important new study on wound healing and hair follicle mesenchymal stem cell activity was published in June 2021. The Israeli researchers behind this paper concluded the following:

“During wound healing, dermal papilla (DP) and dermal sheath (DS) cells move towards the wound, but do not directly participate in follicle neogenesis.”

They further elaborate that follicle neogenesis during wound healing is a genuine de-novo process. The new follicle formation does not rely on any preexisting components from preexisting follicles.

October 24, 2020

Wound Healing and Hair Follicle Growth

Two recent papers published important new findings in regards to wound healing and skin regeneration.

Wound healing via skin regeneration is often accompanied by hair follicle regeneration. Or even by brand new hair follicle neogenesis (e.g., Follica). Note that this hair growth after wounding phenomenon was even being researched in the 1950s and 1960s.

Thousands of hair loss sufferers around the world are trying out at-home microneedling and dermarolling. Many of them have seen significant success, although one has to be careful with this type of scalp self-injury. On our hair loss chat, the most interesting recent discussion is around wounding depth levels.

Human embryonic and neonatal skin has the potential to regenerate after wounding. This includes fully functioning hair follicles. However, adult skin no longer has such regenerative capabilities. Researchers have been trying for years to find ways to coax salamander-like regenerative powers in humans. If not for whole limbs, at least for hair growing skin to cover baldness for our sake.

New Studies on Skin Regeneration and Wound Healing

1) In September 2020, a team that included Dr. Jeff Biernaskie published a study on the regenerative potential of dermal fibroblasts during wound healing. They identified a specific population of progenitor cells that reside within the dermis and which aid in wound healing. I covered Dr. Biernaskie and his University of Calgary team in detail in 2020.

Skin Regeneration Regulators. Source: Bernaskie Lab GitHub.

This latest research is shared on GitHub. Also see Biernaskie Lab. According to the findings, Runx1, retinoic acid, and Hic1 control mesenchymal regenerative capabilities.

According to this summary, Dr. Biernaskie said that they have shown the following:

“You can alter the wound environment with drugs, or modify the genetics of these progenitor cells directly. Both are sufficient to change their behavior during wound healing. And that can have really quite impressive effects on healing that includes regeneration of new hair follicles, glands and fat within the wounded skin.”
“It suggests that the adult wound-responsive cells do in fact harbor a latent regenerative capacity, it just simply needs to be unmasked.”

2) Also in September 2020, a new study from the University of Washington identified Wnt transcription factor Lymphoid enhancer-binding factor 1 (LEF1) as the key factor in adult skin regeneration.

LEF1 gene expression in fibroblasts has the potential in adult skin to repair itself like the skin of a newborn baby. This skin can also grow new hair follicles.

In an interview with lead author Dr. Ryan Driskell (link no longer working), he said the following:

“We identified a genetic factor that allows adult skin to repair itself like the skin of a newborn baby.”

Skinregeneration.org

The authors of the above study have started a new site called skinregeneration.org. The site’s mission is to provide a platform for scientists to easily query large datasets that focus on skin wounding and scarring repair.

For further information, see the Driskell Laboratory site at Washington State University.

Update: July 8, 2022 — A WSU research team led by Dr. Ryan Driskell is researching how to regenerate skin without scarring. This would be done by reactivating Lef1 expression in adult fibroblasts. In effect, this would turn adult skin into more youthful young skin.

Hair, Skin and Wounds all Interconnected

While researching for this post, I could not believe the number of diverse past posts that I have written on this blog that have focused on skin regeneration, wound healing and hair formation.

- I have covered PolarityTE a number of times. The company claims that its technology can grow new skin with fully intact sweat glands and hair follicles. Also see my past posts on companies involved in 3D bioprinting of hair and skin.
- In 2020, I wrote about hair-bearing human skin that was generated entirely from pluripotent stem cells.

Regenerating hair follicle after wounding. — Wound induced single hair follicle neogenesis in a bald old man.

Another item of interest entails activation of the Sonic Hedgehog Pathway and subsequent wound healing and hair regrowth.
Also see the connection between wounding, interleukin-1 and hair growth.
For a fascinating and yet comedic take, I recommend reading “never too old to regenerate hair“.
Follica and wounding. And of course the popular related subjects of microneedling and dermarolling that I have written about a number of times.
Also see my post on the Uniformed Services University and its work to create cell-based skin substitutes for the US military. I have also mentioned Wake Forest and its skin cell printing project in the past.
Several fibroblast growth factors promote hair follicle growth after wounding. See the FGF section in my post on growth factors in PRP. And this FGF-9 patent from U Penn.

Renowned hair loss researchers such as Dr. George Cotsarelis, Dr. Luis Garza, Dr. Elaine Fuchs and Dr. Mayumi Ito have all also conducted frequent research on skin regeneration. I have discussed their work in past posts if you search for their names.

My gut feeling is that whenever there is a fully effective cure for hair loss, there is a strong likelihood that there will also be a cure for quality skin regeneration.

Skin Gun and Spray-On Skin

It seems like the technology to repair skin has improved significantly during the past decade. There is an especially unmet need when it comes to treating skin that has been burnt badly.

One of the technologies that I used to very curious about is the skin gun that was widely hyped in 2011. I have not heard much about this in recent years. RenovaCare acquired the technology in 2013. The company’s skin gun and spray-on stem cells for wound healing are trademarked under the names SkinGun™ and CellMist™.

Fake Hair Transplant Before and After Photos Using AI