Who will be a candidate for hair cloning?
The reality is, most individuals can be successfully transplanted using their own existing hairs, in sufficient quantities, to create significant improvement in the treatment of hair loss. The average male patient presents with over 8000 donor grafts total (over 16,000 hairs)- a significant number that can allow for two procedures of 2600-plus grafts, then subsequent smaller procedures.
However, given the amount of reparative work I perform, I do see individuals who, because of excessive scarring and/or inefficient transplanting techniques, have a serious deficiency of an adequate amount of hair for transplanting. While these individuals can be helped even with conservative procedures, they strike me as those who would benefit most from cloning techniques of the future that could provide much larger- potentially unlimited- numbers of donor hairs or cells to initiate the growth of new hairs.
Posted by Jeffrey S. Epstein, MD, FACS