pindakaas
30 december 2003, 16:12
Clinical Programmes / TrichoCyte
Hair loss affects approximately 40% of men and 20% of women aged 50 and over. In the USA there are an estimated 40 million men and 20 million women suffering from some degree of baldness and some $1.5 billion is spent annually on hair loss therapies.
TrichoCyte represents a next generation hair transplant technology. Existing treatments, invlolving the transplant of whole hairs, represent the only means of regenerating bald areas, but usually require multiple surgical procedures, long recovery intervals and lengthy treatment regimes. Furthermore many individuals have insufficient donor hair follicles to benefit from this technique.
TrichoCyte involves the culture and expansion of follicular cells which are injected into the scalp underneath the epidermis of the skin to induce formation of new hair follicles in-situ. The procedure is considerably less problematic than conventional hair transplants, both in terms of the amount of tissue taken from the patient, and also in the amount of trauma - injecting cultured cells will cause far less tissue damage than implanting a section of scalp and is a considerably simpler process.
Since the follicular cells can be derived from only a very small area of hair-bearing scalp, a much higher population of patients will be able to benefit from TrichoCyte than conventional transplantation.
Phase I clinical trials have commenced and are being conducted on a small cohort of volunteers. Phase II multi-centre clinical trials on patients with male pattern baldness are planned for 2004 and will be performed in both the UK and US.
http://www.intercytex.net/ICX.php?Page=trichocyte
Hair loss affects approximately 40% of men and 20% of women aged 50 and over. In the USA there are an estimated 40 million men and 20 million women suffering from some degree of baldness and some $1.5 billion is spent annually on hair loss therapies.
TrichoCyte represents a next generation hair transplant technology. Existing treatments, invlolving the transplant of whole hairs, represent the only means of regenerating bald areas, but usually require multiple surgical procedures, long recovery intervals and lengthy treatment regimes. Furthermore many individuals have insufficient donor hair follicles to benefit from this technique.
TrichoCyte involves the culture and expansion of follicular cells which are injected into the scalp underneath the epidermis of the skin to induce formation of new hair follicles in-situ. The procedure is considerably less problematic than conventional hair transplants, both in terms of the amount of tissue taken from the patient, and also in the amount of trauma - injecting cultured cells will cause far less tissue damage than implanting a section of scalp and is a considerably simpler process.
Since the follicular cells can be derived from only a very small area of hair-bearing scalp, a much higher population of patients will be able to benefit from TrichoCyte than conventional transplantation.
Phase I clinical trials have commenced and are being conducted on a small cohort of volunteers. Phase II multi-centre clinical trials on patients with male pattern baldness are planned for 2004 and will be performed in both the UK and US.
http://www.intercytex.net/ICX.php?Page=trichocyte