So What is Hair Cloning?

Hair cloning is still a relatively new technology that is stirring up the commotions recently. Concentrated research began around a decade ago and new developments have only been spotlighted recently. As the name says it, it's about a way on how you can actually promote and add new hair follicles to your head and if successful, you can have an unlimited supply of potential growing hair follicles.

It's not a process where new hair follicles are created and implanted to your hair like most people might have imagine but it actually involves extracting, cultivating and stimulating certain cells and specialized proteins like

• Derma papilla
• Derma sheath
• Keratinocytes
• Laminin-511

The whole process is a little complicated but overall very interesting to read. Therefore, I've divided the topic into a few chapters so that you can have a basic understanding on what it's all about. If you are interested in knowing what this technology can do for you, I strongly recommend taking some time and read the few sections below. The few chapters are

• Understanding Your Hair Follicles
• The Basis of Follicular Unit Implantation
• Existing Problems in Hair Cloning
• Where Hair Cloning is Today

Understanding Your Hair Follicle:

Before we begin, let us take a brief and fast look into your hair follicle and how different parts of it works and which part will play a crucial role in producing your new hair. It's important to know what to expect from hair cloning by looking at this step first.

A hair follicle is indeed a very important part of your skin. Besides the aesthetical qualities it brings, every single follicle helps keep your body's heat in balance and excretes oil that conditions and protects your skin, preventing it from drying.

The science behind hair cloning involves understanding the inner workings of the hair follicle and the responsible cells for generating hair growth. So if you want to know the full potential of this latest technology, do take a deep look on how this tiny organ in your skin works.

Where It All Begins

It all began when you are still a little fetus, where your hair follicles as well as your other major organs start to take shape. During the first few weeks into pregnancy, where cells divide and form individual organs like your lungs, liver and kidneys, your largest organ, the skin starts to develop.

Skin cells known as dermal papilla starts to travel to the top of the dermis, the inner part of your skin layer and cluster together. These 'seed cells' are the foundation of the hair follicle. After finding a comfortable place on your skin, these cells will then send an unknown signal to nearby skin cells to form new follicles around them.

By the 22nd week of fetal development, you should roughly have around 4-5 million of hair follicles spread throughout your body with around 100,000 of them on your scalp. These are indeed great numbers, for that cute little baby that you are going to become. However, there won't be any new follicle formation after this stage and as you grow older, the hair follicle density will gradually reduce.

That is also the main reason why until now there has not been a proven method to actually grow more hair that you already have. Even the most successful hair loss treatments are only to maintain, reallocate or restore the current hair that you have left on your scalp. However, with the advent of Hair Cloning, this once saddening fact might change, for good.

The Concept Behind It ALL :

What are you expecting from this procedure? First, let's understand the basic idea on how it works. Hair cloning comes in many forms but it's now more commonly known as Follicular Cell Implantation. This process requires some salvaging of your hair follicle's base known as derma papilla combine with cell re

 
Follicular Cell Implantation is a key development component of the hair cloning process where it primarily involves in extracting, growing and then reinserting back the cultured cells into your scalp. This procedure can be said to be the epitome of hair cloning and it's one of the most promising method that can possibly provide you with an unlimited supply of hair follicles.

Although researchers still have not fully break all the puzzles in this procedure, trials and advanced experiments are ongoing as we speak and the initial results might blow the rest of your hair away!

The Story of the Hair Seeds:

The rapid progress in stem cells research opens up a diversity of possibilities in medical and health improvements like a more thorough understanding of how your cells multiply, behave and most importantly, how do we manipulate and replicate them.

When Dolly the sheep was first cloned from somatic cells, the world's view on the limitations of cloning science has literally changed overnight. Dolly the SheepNot soon after, all sorts of news about cloning are spreading everywhere like wildfire. That is when a new era of medical science had emerged.

At the present moment, the possibilities of cloning are limitless where we receive new breakthroughs in stem cell technology on a regular basis. Human cloning, genetic alternations, pre-programmed babies and even cloned organs that were once fiction are now becoming a near reality. Even a new type of 'banking' system for storing stem cells for future 'needs' are booming everywhere. Do you have an account with them?

Hair Cloning itself holds just a miniscule fraction in the entire grand scale of things and Follicular Cell Implantation is just a part of it while new ideas and methods of hair cloning are popping up consistently. At the meantime, let's look at what the researchers have kept in store for us in the near future about this technology.

Follicular Cell Implantation Basics

The basic idea in Follicular Cell Implantation is actually very straight forward indeed. Scientists have found that the dermal papilla and the inner dermal sheath cells located at the bottom of the hair bulb in each hair follicle play a very crucial role in the hair cycling process where they

• Regulate the hair growth cycle
• Determine the hairs shaft's size and growth
• Mediate the supply of oxygen and nutrients to the hair

Therefore, needless to say, if you can get a load of these cells, there is a real possibility to grow new hair follicles or at least heal the crippled ones and that what's the scientists did. They multiplied it.

A Simple Step by Step Process

Simply speaking, Follicular Cell Implantation can be divided into a few basic steps. One basic example is..

1. The surgeon extracts the dermal papilla cells located at the bottom of the hair bulb from 10-100 healthy hair follicles.
2. The cells are then multiplied or cultured in the lab and where a few hundred extracted cells can become millions within a couple of months.
3. Upon reaching the desired figure, these cells are then injected back into the scalp.

To produce a new hair follicle, two crucial cells must be present. The first type are the dermal papilla cells and the other are the Keratinocytes cells. These are the major cells found below the epidermis that produce keratin, a tough, protective protein that makes up the majority of the structure of the skin, hair, and nails. Without the combination of both cells, forming hair follicles would be impossible.

Generally there are a few mix and match ways to go with this procedure and scientists are still studying each benefits. The procedures are

• Implanting the Dermal Papilla Cells Directly
  This Follicular Cell Implantation process involves directly injection the cultured cells into the dermis (beneath the skin) in hoping that the injected cells will send signals to nearby skin cells to form new hair follicles. This process is also known as follicular neo genesis. The other way is to directly inject cells to nearby miniaturized hair follicles like those facing pattern baldness to stimulate the hair follicles to grow back to their original sizes.
• Implanting Partially Developed Hair Follicles
  Another method that is under consideration which will probably ensure a more successful attempt for hair follicle formation is to culture the dermal papilla cells together with the Keratinocytes cells first before implanting it to the scalp. This way will also provide surgeons with overall better control of the hair's orientation and placement as well as making sure of acceptable hair follicle development. There is a variant of the technique where the dermal papilla cells are developed with the help of a synthetic or biological 'mold' to enable the hair follicle to develop properly before inserting into the scalp.

Perfecting Follicular Cell Transplantation

I am sure by now you must have realized the potential of this procedure and what it can do in the near future for you to get back your hair, PERMANENTLY.

Although I would say Follicular Cell Implantation might be the best possible solution for hair loss in the near future, it will still take a matter of time for researchers to break some of the common tribulations and obstacles that are still in the way. After that, you might finally have a chance to say good bye hair loss!

Existing Problems in Hair Cloning :

Nothing great is achieved in a single day. As with hair cloning, a technology that might bring the brightest hope to hair loss sufferers, there are yet a few major obstacles that needed to be overcome first before this technology can be finally be put into practice .

Trials and Issues

So what are the major obstacles in hair cloning? There are a few actually, to be more precise, there are currently 5 major issues that scientists are looking to solve. These are

• Inconsistent Quantity
• Cell Differentiation
• Hair Alignment
• Uneven Hair Growth
• Cell Reaction

These are all the major obstacles in hair cloning that will determine how soon the technology will be available for you. Bear in mind, even after rectifying all these problems, there will still be multiple trials before the final product will be introduced to the market. So let’s hope that they are solving these issues as fast as possible! Now let’s take a deeper look at each of them below.

Where Are We Today?

Hopefully by now you should have a rough idea of what hair cloning is all about. So will this technology be a reality one day? I would say it’s definitely coming and it’s just a matter of when before it becomes available to the public (or how much agony you will have to suffer waiting for it).

Come back regularly and get the latest updates and progress reports from companies and researchers engaged in the race for the ultimate cure for hair loss. Now, let’s see who the leaders in this field are and how far have they come with the solution that we all been waiting for.

The People Responsible

Hair cloning is not relatively 'fresh' concept due to the fact that it’s been researched and discussed for around over decade now. There are many companies interested in advancing in this field but just a handful of them are seriously pursuing to develop a workable product for the public.

Most of these companies usually have backgrounds in stem cell research which concentrate on skin rejuvenation and repair products. Therefore, these companies already have the right know how, knowledge and manpower to pursue and focus on hair cloning.

Hair cloning indeed belongs to a very niche market and I am pretty sure that the first company that manages to hit the jackpot will definitely be seeing a huge boost in their bottom line. Therefore, most of them are heftily relying on the possible success of their hair cloning researches as their win or break point. Some of these companies are

• Intercytex
• Aderans Research Institute
• Follica Bio Labs
• Histogen Labs

We will go through briefly on their hair cloning updates to see how far each has been doing. – Updated  July 2009