The Hype of Using Platelet-Rich Plasma in Hair Transplant Techniques Health Articles | April 16 Cheap Janoris Jenkins Jersey , 2012
There have been a lot of breakthroughs in the field of hair restoration since the turn of the until now, androgenetic alopecia (AGA), the common type of baldness, remains to be a problem f...

There have been a lot of breakthroughs in the field of hair restoration since the turn of the century.

But until now, androgenetic alopecia (AGA), the common type of baldness, remains to be a problem for many men and women.

Hair transplant techniques are one of the conventional approaches to AGA, especially in severe cases. Although they provide the promise of a cure, they are nothing like one. These methods have their share of flaws. But there is an assistive technique that reduces these flaws. It is the use of platelet-rich plasma (PRP).

The Human Blood and PRP

The human blood is composed of the red blood cells, white blood cells, platelets and plasma. When activated, platelets release growth factors PDGF and VEGF and other bioactive proteins that may be beneficial in wound healing.

In the initial process of clotting, platelets are necessary in healing wounds. Increasing the platelet count is said to accelerate the healing process. For this reason, platelet-rich plasma is used in the field of surgical hair restoration for wound healing and graft survival.

PRP in Hair Restoration

PRP contains roughly about five times the number of platelets than what normally occurs in the blood. Scientists and physicians experimented on PRP聮s ability to reactivate dormant stem cells that produce hair.

In a 2009 study, the use of PRP was able to prevent and reverse the process of hair loss caused by androgenetic alopecia. In hair transplant techniques, the procedure involves taking the patient聮s own platelet-rich plasma and injecting it into the recipient and donor sites. This will facilitate healing of the transplanted grafts and donor areas.

Recently, a new technique is drawn from the concept. Acell, a powder extracted from pigs聮 bladders, is added to PRP. Scientists state that these injections will stop hair loss and facilitate hair growth.

Through this treatment process, the healthy hair cells are protected with a protective barrier which duplicates the surrounding tissues to invite hair-producing stem cells again.

On the downside, all the hype remains unconventional. PRP is still not proven to assist in hair growth in hair transplant techniques. Still there are a number of physicians recommending the technique.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug. 24 (Xinhua) -- Carolyn Bertozzi, a professor of chemistry at Stanford University, has shown that removing certain sugars surrounding breast cancer cells can recruit a second arm of the immune system - the innate immune system.

The approach, described in a study published this week in Proceedings of the (U.S.) National Academy of Sciences, greatly improved the effectiveness of a breast cancer drug in a lab dish, opening up a new avenue in the fight against cancer.

"This is a whole new dimension to immune therapy," Bertozzi said, adding that she thinks it could be the first of many therapeutic approaches involving the sugars that surround cells, called the glycocalyx. "People in this field are starting to appreciate that there are many different nodes that you need to affect to get a more robust immune reaction against a tumor, and the glycocalyx appears to be one of those nodes."

Researchers have long known that if certain sugars are present on a tumor, it is less likely to respond well to therapies, according to a news release from Stanford. But nobody knew what that halo of sugars was doing, in part because such a small number of labs study the glycocalyx.

Evidence had been mounting within those few labs that do study the glycocalyx, including Bertozzi's, that a subset of sugars called sialic acids act as a signal for the innate immune system to ignore the otherwise suspicious-looking tumor. Eliminate those sugars, and maybe innate immune cells would be more likely to recognize and attack the cancer cells, Bertozzi thought.

Bertozzi and her team worked with breast cancer cells in the lab that had varying amounts of a protein called HER2 on the surface. Women whose tumors have that protein at high levels generally receive a therapy called Herceptin, which is an antibody that binds to HER2 and flags the tumor cell for destruction by innate immune cells, such as natural killer (NK) cells and macrophages.

But Herceptin does not always work, especially in tumors with less abundant HER2, and if sialic acids are present on the cancer cell surface, then it is even less likely to be effective.

The Stanford team used chemistry tools they had created in previous work to attach what is essentially a chemical lawn mower onto the Herceptin antibody. Once the drug bound to HER2 molecules on the cancer cell, the chemical mower sliced off the neighboring sialic acids.

With those sugars gone, Herceptin became significantly more likely to activate NK cells to kill the cancerous cells, especially in cases where the cells had lower levels of HER2 and higher levels of sugars. This all took place in a lab dish, but Bertozzi is hopeful a version of this strategy could be effective in people.

"All of the world of immune therapy is now thinking about the immune system as calculating pluses and minuses. If you want to tilt the scale toward immune activation, you can either augment the activator or remove inhibitor, or both," said Bertozzi.

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