HairClone® is a new and unique Biotechnology Company partnering with Clinicians and Patients to make hair loss a thing of the past.
The Dream Of Unlimited Hair Is Closer Than Ever With Dr. Barusco’s Affiliation With HairClone®
Maintaining our tradition for clinical research and innovation, we are proud to announce our partnership with HairClone®, a leading biotechnology company based in England, UK. Dr. Barusco accepted HairClone’s® prestigious invitation to join their group as a Clinical Partner, making Tempus Hair Restoration one of the very few research and development centers for this exciting new technology. Currently, there are only four other U.S.-based physicians and practices who have been invited by HairClone®. Dr. Barusco and Tempus Hair Restoration are the fifth, and now join a leading group of international scientists and researchers dedicated to help bring this revolution from the lab to clinical practice.
Research in hair cloning technology spans more than 40 years, but only recently scientists have been able to master the delicate processes required to extract viable cells from a person’s hair follicles and then store them for further expansion (multiplication) for new hair growth. This is a very complicated process, since hair follicles are extremely complex organs, with many types of different cells. So far, the following critical steps have been perfected by HairClone®:
- 1 The method to remove the patient’s follicular units, which is done via a simple FUE extraction procedure done by Dr. Barusco. 50 to 100 follicular units will need to be harvested, being then sent to HairClone’s® facility in England for the extraction of the cells and their preservation.
- 2 The method to cryopreserve hair follicles, which allows extracted hair follicles to be sent from Tempus Hair Restoration’s office to the HairClone® lab while still keeping all cells alive. Special shipping containers have been developed for this purpose.
- 3 The method to cryobank cells for many years, allowing harvested hair cells to be maintained for many years for future implants into the patient.
- 4 The method to micro-dissect out the required cells from the hair follicle, which allows the scientists at the HairClone® lab to extract the cells from the patient’s hair follicles. Once extracted, these cells will be kept frozen in a government-approved tissue bank in England, ready to create new hairs.
- 5 Method to micro-inject follicle cells back into the scalp. Once the patient wants more hair, the HairClone® lab will induce the cells to multiply – cell expansion – and once a certain number of cells have been achieved, these cells will be implanted into the patient’s bald scalp, eventually generating new hair follicles.
- 6 Monitoring systems to measure hair shaft thickness and hair density, to ensure success of the treatment for the patient.
Though many questions have been answered, there are still areas being studied, and the clinical partners will help answer these questions as treatments become available.
So, What Does This All Mean?
At the moment, the process looks like this:
- A patient will be seen in consultation by Dr. Barusco.
- Once it is determined that the patient is a good candidate for hair cloning, Dr. Barusco will extract 50-100 follicular units from the patient’s donor zone (area of permanent hair). This is a simple, outpatient procedure that will take approximately one hour to perform.
- Dr. Barusco and the team at Tempus Hair will prepare these hairs and send them, frozen, to the HairClone® facility in England. This is called “Tissue Banking.”
- Once there, scientists will harvest and isolate the cells needed for cloning. These cells will be preserved frozen indefinitely for the patient to use at any time.
- Once the patient decides that he or she wants to have hair cells implanted in their scalp, the scientists at HairClone® will multiply his or her hair cells, always keeping some for the future.
- The cells will then be injected into the patient’s scalp, and once inside the skin, a complex and wonderful series of interactions between the cells and the skin will induce the formation of new hair follicles.
- Expectations are that by the end of 2018, Dr. Barusco will start “banking” hair cells from patients. Since at the moment cell cloning is not allowed in the U.S., patients will initially have to fly to Manchester, UK to have their newly created cells injected back into their scalp. Within a few short years, Dr. Barusco and the other Clinical Partners will conduct clinical studies to allow the entire process to be done in the U.S.
“Maintaining our tradition for clinical research and innovation, we are proud to announce our partnership with HairClone®“