The best anti-aging strategy most people are missing out on

Acorn CEO, Dr Drew Taylor joined Amber Milt on her podcast ArtBeauty to discuss the potential for skin treatments found in our hair follicles, their potential uses in regenerative medicine and the benefits of cryogenically preserving the cells. 

Dr. Drew Taylor dives into why cell preservation is the best anti-aging strategy that most people are missing out on. According to Drew, Acorn is preparing people to take advantage and receive benefits from regenerative medicine, by using their own younger cells to disrupt aging and disease. 

Here are some of the most important insights Dr. Drew gives to help prepare for the benefits of regenerative medicine:

1. The earlier you preserve your cells, the better

Drew believes it’s better late than never when it comes to preserving our younger cells. Our cells are at their healthiest in our early twenties and the effects of aging gradually build up until our mid-sixties, when the effects of aging start to increase rapidly. We will never be younger than we are today, so the opportunity to bank our cells - at all ages - and bypass additional years of aging can be beneficial.

"What we're at risk of is that millions of people, around right now, are going to miss access to (regenerative medicine) because, unfortunately, at their time of need, their cells will have advanced in age and will not be a viable resource to use."

2. Why Acorn freezes the hair follicle

Acorn focuses on hair follicle cell banking, due to it’s high concentration of adult mesenchymal stem cells. Mesenchymal stem cells are primary targets for various stem cell therapies, as they are one of the most widely researched cell sources for use in regenerative medicine.

"The hair follicle is a source from which you can extract mesenchymal stem cells and can be used to grow into cartilage, bone, and fat to show the diversity of these cells to help patients and obviously skin." 

The benefit of these cells is that they expand readily, create more on demand, cryogenically freeze very sufficiently, and can create a pool of your cells for future use.

3. Skin and aesthetic medicine will be the first uses of banked cells

Not only focused on cell preservation, Dr. Drew and Acorn are also working on applications and products for cells banked with Acorn. The first application the team is developing is a topical serum derived from stem cell extracts. 

This extract serum is rich in growth factors, collagens, extracellular matrix, and exosomes – all derived autologously from your own cells. These elements are key ingredients for skin and hair health and can be administered similarly to PRP treatments, but Dr Drew elaborates, these extracts provide more elements than what we find in PRP: “(Stem cell extracts) will also have building blocks of your skin and hair, things that will not be in PRP, like collagen, proteoglycans, link protein, and hyaluronic acid. We don't get those things in PRP, but we can get them from our cells". 

4. The cell banking procedure is simple and without any noticeable side effects

Acorn is the first non-invasive cell banking solution in North America. A simple plucking procedure is fast and has minimal discomfort. As long as you have accessible hair on the sides and back of the head, you’ll be able to have valuable cells collected and preserved.

Dr. Drew Taylor explains the method Acorn uses to collect the hair follicles and states, "there's no loss when plucking hair follicles, as you will not be able to see where the hair is plucked, targeting the back of the scalp from ear to ear." 

A specially designed kit is used to pluck the hair follicles, and patients can keep the kit at the end of the collection appointment.

5. We're entering an exciting future

Drew notes that future regenerative therapies are promising when being proactive and banking your cells.

"There will be patients that will end up having access to these next-generation therapies because they chose to bank their cells. And others are going to fall outside of the candidacy because either an age passes or other elements that cause other complications."

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