Hair Cuts #1 (January 6, 2023 - February 24, 2023) ____________________________________________________________________________
Hairforce Academy - welcome to the inaugural HairDAO Monthly, where you can get your hairy alpha. These documents will stitch together the most important conversations and happenings within the DAO, providing a compressed recap of what you may have missed while you were off losing your hair. Highlight: TGF-b vs PAI-1 The most promising target today in the hair loss community remains PAI-1. Inhibition of PAI-1 has showed strong benefits across a plethora of diseases, from brain injury to musculosketal atrophy to cellular senescence. While much of the work has been done mice thus far (to Dr. Ralf Paus’s chagrin), there exists strong evidence of PAI-1’s inhibition longevity effects in humans through a mutation in an American Amish community. The gene was first covered by Follicle Thought in March 2021 through Eirion Therapeutics. However, today’s clinical trial system moves remarkably slowly. The question remains: is PAI-1 inhibition a viable hair loss treatment? We may get our first datasets sooner than later, and request that anyone researching a PAI-1 inhibitor uploads their response data to the HairDao Patient Portal, such that we can aggregate data to inform future researchers. While those experimenting with PAI-1 are some of the best researchers in the world, one stand-out showed counterpoints that are to be considered. Synthetic Pug, a leader in cellular senescence research, ponders, “It seems like PAI-1 comes into play after TGF-B increases, so targeting TGF-B first (as hydrangea was hypothesized to do) would be a different mechanism but also lead to PAI-1 reduction. This seems more effective because of TGF-B's potential to activate NOX and downregulate SOD2, so by the time PAI-1 gets involved, it might already be too late.” Pug’s point was rebutted by Pubehead (you read that correctly)--who states findings confirmed by those in the VitaDAO community, “Pai-1 reduction alone doesn't mean much unfortunately. For example, Vaughan tried a barrage of Pai-1 inhibitors in the transgenic mice, but TM5441 and its derivatives were the first to give phenotypic rescue. Seems there are intricacies on how it must be bound to Pai-1 in order to also effect vn-bound Pai-1.” We thus are left to question which of the two frequently discussed targets is more important to target. Only time and data will tell.
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