Hair Restoration, Hair Transplant, Hair Loss Treatment Clinic

Part 3 of Hair Stemcell Transplantation®: Follicular Stemcell Transplantation - The possibilities and limitations

By Coen Gho, MD
Hair Science Institute, Amsterdam, Netherlands

In this article presented by Dr. Coen Gho, he states the importance of direct-indirect injury in hair restoration and that they can increase the viability of the tissue in the donor area, the recipient area and the grafts. Kim et al. and Reynolds et al. found that not the whole hair follicle is necessary for hair growth induction. This knowledge is important to understand why it is possible to multiply hairs in humans.

The smaller the amount of tissue transplanted the more influence the preservation medium, instruments and handling the grafts has on the viability and apoptosis of the transplanted tissue, the survival rate of the grafts and therefore hair growth.

With this study, they have tried to develop a hair transplantation method which can preserve the hair follicles in the donor area, without affecting the characteristics of the hairs in the donor area as well as the recipient area.

Grafts were harvested with special hollow wave-tipped needles with an inner diameter of 0.35 to 0.6mm from the occipital area of the scalp. The longitudinal partial follicular units were selected. The selected grafts were impregnated with a special developed preservation medium, and implanted into the recipient area. The donor area as well as the recipient area was observed before, one week, three months and one year after the extraction of the grafts.

With special developed preservation medium, the right pre- and post treatment/medication strategy, they revealed that two hair follicles can be regenerated from one follicle if it is dissected in the right way. Longitudinal parts of the follicular unit, which contain follicular stem cells and connective tissue, are sufficient to regenerate differentiated hair growth with the same diameter and characteristics as the hairs in the donor area. The follicular unit which remains in the dermis in the donor area, after a longitudinal part of this follicular unit is extracted, can survive and produce the same number of hairs with the same diameter and characteristics.

Although they transplant longitudinal partial follicular units, the main object is to transplant sufficient follicular stem cells to regenerate hair growth in the recipient area. Therefore, they named this technique "Hair Stemcell Transplantation®".

They reveal that this technique may represent the first reliable patient friendly method to multiply hair follicles in vivo with consistent results and preserve the donor area.