FAK Inhibitor, Verteporfin

Verteporfin Week in the Hair Loss World

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April 2, 2023

An encouraging update on Verteporfin and some donor area hair regrowth from Jordan-based Dr. Barghouthi in his interview with the Hair Transplant Network. Still too early to know whether these results are permanent and constantly replicable by other surgeons. And whether any new hair will cycle ok in the long term. But this initiative is really great to see.

Please read my entire original post below for the relevant studies and past videos. It is also possible that FAK inhibitors will be even better than Verteporfin in regrowing hair based on concurrent research findings at the Longaker Lab.

July 24, 2022

It is Verteporfin week in the world of hair loss. More than a year after Stanford’s Longaker Lab findings that Verteporfin injections cause regenerative wound and skin healing in mice. Back then, the news even made it into the NY Times: “Imagine, Surgery Without a Scar.”

Besides the three new recent Verteporfin and hair growth related videos that I mention at the bottom of this post, this week I also got: Verteporfin related emails, blog comments and even a private message on Instagram. I am not as excited as so many people when it comes to the hair regeneration prospects, but this subject is clearly going to remain important in 2022.

Do not Forget FAK Inhibitors

As I mentioned last year in a post, FAK inhibitors might be superior to Verteporfin when it comes to wound healing and hair follicle regeneration. Make sure to also read the comments from Dr. Kellen Chen (one of the FAKI study co-authors) in that post.

See my conversation with one of the Longaker Lab researchers on Twitter in September 2021 regarding both these options. Note that these same scientists (led by Dr. Michael Longaker) published both studies:

Verteporfin and FAK inhibitors both work via the inhibition of the YAP pathway. See part of my conversation with @DrPhil on Discord from last year where he favors the latter over the former:

Verteporfin vs FAK Inhibitor wound healing.
Verteporfin vs FAK Inhibitor wound healing.

Also per Dr. Phil:

“This VS-6062 FAK inhibitor does the same thing as verteporfin, but it inhibits a target which is upstream of YAP. Verteporfin only inhibits YAP, while VS-6062 inhibits FAK (which controls YAP) and also other targets. FAK inhibitors can also be applied topically, with no injections required. Moreover, VS-6062 has already gone through Phase 1 and Phase 2 clinical trials to treat cancer.”

Verteporfin Human Clinical Trials

The biggest reason for all this recent excitement is due to the fact that a hair transplant surgeon is finally testing Verteporfin in his patients. Verteporfin (trade name Visudyne) is already FDA approved for photodynamic therapy to treat various eye problems.

Therefore, many people were wondering why we need to wait for the Longaker Lab to begin their human trials (after their pig trials finish). After all, any surgeon can test it out off-label right now. Luckily, we finally have our wishes fulfilled. See the next section with videos further below.

While I am not optimistic on any kind of hair regrowth in the donor region after graft extraction, I would not be surprised at some improvement in wound healing. i.e., the potential for hair transplants with minimal donor scarring in the future.

However, it should be noted that most FUE hair transplants seem to result in acceptable levels of scarring. On the other, FUT (strip) hair transplant still often have very obvious signs of scarring (e.g., see Elon Musk’s hair transplant). Also see my poll results on FUE versus FUT hair transplants.

Three new Videos on Verteporfin and Hair Growth

  • On June 21, 2022 Hairliciously published a new video on Verteporfin and hair follicle regeneration.
  • On June 22, 2022 Hair Transplant Network published a great interview with Dr. Taleb Barghouthi of the Vertex Hair Clinic in Jordan. He is experimenting with using Verteporfin on his hair transplant patients for one month. If the best case scenario is realized, we would see hair regeneration in the extraction sites and a potentially unlimited donor supply. I am very skeptical, but I liked this interview and Dr. Barghouthi sounds very sincere. Even if the strip or FUE hair transplant scars can be improved via the use of Visudyne, it will be a great achievement. So far,  Dr. Barghouthi has seen a delay in healing from sites injected with Verteporfin. According to the video description, this could mean that the pathway that signals the body to being scarring is  being blocked.
  • On May 17, there was an interesting presentation on verteporfin and its anti-scarring effects by Dr. Heather Talbott (who has conducted years of research on wound healing and scarring). Watch the section between 14 mins and 32 mins in the video.
Artificial Intelligence, Bing Image Creator, ChatGPT, Hair Transplant

Fake Hair Transplant Before and After Photos Using AI

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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.

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.”

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.