Norma – Status update

Sarah Campeau    Astressin-B, Research and latest Discoveries    

Hello everyone, we do apologize for the lack of updates recently, but we have been a bit short on staff in the last couple of weeks.
As promised, the preliminary report will be posted in 48 hours, we really appreciate your patience. Unfortunately the third Thyroid series installment is a bit late, hopefully I will get around to post it as soon as things get normalized.

Astressin-B– Important Notice/Alert

Sarah Campeau    Astressin-B, Research and latest Discoveries    

We have posted this alert before, but today we received worrying news of patients allegedly injecting themselves with topical solutions of Astressin-B.

I can’t stress enough how dangerous doing something like this is. Not only has the compound not been deemed safe, but injecting a solution that is intended to be used topically is boarder line insane. Please contact us in case you see people discussing this topic in forums or discussing groups so that we can intervene and help.

Our Credentials – The Last Stand

Jason Wats MD    Research and latest Discoveries    

Surprisingly we continue to receive a lot of correspondence asking for our credentials. These queries culminated with a phone yesterday call from one of the universities that is supporting us complaining that they had received a phone call from an agitated gentleman demanding to speak with someone from our research group.

I promptly told them to provide our contact information and had a rather surreal conversation with the person in question, that among other things, was demanding that we publicly post the current results from all of our on-going research and hand him over our degrees so that he could verify our credentials and legitimacy.
While I genuinely feel I should not have done so, I felt compelled to fax him a copy of our certification, and degrees.

Maybe it was my natural tendency to protect our team, but regretted that I felt the need to justify something to a stranger immediately after hitting the send button.

This community is filled with wonderful people, Sarah in particular seems to be very fond of many of the members, and coincidently the positive feedback seems to be driving the team. I have seen Sarah printing and reading out loud some of the questions you have been posting to the team. This provides us with purpose, and that’s our fuel.

For the last time, I would like to make it clear the following points to those who don’t seem to understand what we are all about;

• We are a PRIVATE organization

• The research is currently being conducted in Sacramento, in a private lab, but due to budget restrictions we tend to move around the state, and the last month of the research program should be carried out at the Loyola Marymount University.

• Our head researchers have had extensive lab experience.

• We do NOT accept donatives, the project is already fully funded

• Although we have received infrastructural support by several universities, we have not received any monetary funding.

• Our research body consists in students and private researches who have DONATED their time, knowledge and good will to this project.

• We are not required to provide any kind of credential unless we chose to do so.

• We are a research group; not a company, we are not producing a product.

• Again, we are scientists, not businessman.

• The purpose of this blog is to document the progress of our study.

• Some of the articles you will find here are not scientific; they are a mere account of how we feel the project is going. The however objective is to produce a scientific final report.

• You do not have to trust or believe the information that is provided in this blog, you have arrived here with your own innate free will, you can use the same free will to go elsewhere.

• Everyone involved has a job, and is DONATING their time to this project.

• In average our researchers are working 20 hours per week in the Norma project; Sarah is working an average of 40 hours on the lab.

• We are not getting paid by any laboratory or pharmaceutical company

• Questions are more than welcome, a scientific research project must be up for public scrutiny, the scientists themselves however are not part of the equation; Question the data NOT the people.

For those of you who have supported us since the beginning, particularity our active members, we will continue to provide you with information, regardless if we feel the need to change things around, and if necessary will restrict the community to an invite only member system.

Once again, for those of you who have made our community what it is, thank you for supporting us.

Best Regards
Jason Wats MD

Astressin-B Research report – Norma – Parcel C

Sarah Campeau    Astressin-B, Research and latest Discoveries    

Parcel C consists in subjects that have been injected with distinct dosages of the compound. The main variable consists in the duration and consistency of the dosages. This means that the sub-groups within this parcel are helping us determine the efficiency of the compound given different dosages, and how the subjects react to an interruption of the injection cycle, the additional inconsistency of the dosages and duration of the treatment.

This Parcel has been divided in 8 sub-groups, all of which have ongoing experiments that require a constant and prolonged evaluation. Below is the fundamental data being collected on Parcel C;

• Does the compound leave any traces after the treatment has been interrupted?
• Do the side-effects cease after the treatment is interrupted?
• Do the results maintain after the interruption of the treatment? If so, how long are they maintained for.
• How do subjects react to extreme dosages of the compound
• How to the test subjects react to dosage fluctuations

One of the most common questions we keep getting is in regards to the efficiency of Astressin-B used in a treatment to treat hair loss in Androgenic Alopecia patients. While I cannot release a great deal of specifics at this moment, rest assured this is being fully contemplated, particularity in this Parcel.
Since most of the data on this particular parcel is still volatile, as it’s an ongoing experiment, we cannot release a lot of information, but we can safely publish the following preliminary data:

• So far the side effects have disappeared after the treatment has stopped on all sub-control groups.
• An unspecified percentage of subjects who had the treatment interrupted started losing hair again.
• An unspecified percentage of subjects who had the treatment interrupted did not start losing hair again
• High dosages of the compound increase significantly the noted side-effects
• High dosages of the compound did not increase the overall efficiency of the compound

I apologize for not being able to specify the subject conditions, but the purpose of these updates is to give our readers an idea of what we are doing and how the experiment is being conducted, not to provide the definite results.

Astressin-B Research report – Norma – Parcel B

Sarah Campeau    Astressin-B, Research and latest Discoveries    

Parcel B consists in an isolated group of subjects that have been given the same dosage of Astressin-B but that have different CRF levels. Objectively we want to study how the compound behaves and counteracts in the presence of a blocking peripheral CRF receptors molecular switching mechanism with different pre-existing organism strain factors.

For safety reasons we are not going to be specific on dosages at this time. We have translated the CRF into percentages for specification purposes.

Each of the 5 sub-groups had diverse CRF start levels before the treatment initiated; this was the criteria used to group de subjects. Another relevant note regarding the grouping is that all of the subjects have the same approximate age in order to suppress age related factors.

Results (ongoing): The efficiency of the compound decreased as the CRF levels increased. We estimate an overall 24% decline from the lowest CRF Expressing group to the highest. -3% from P-B1 to P-B2, -5% from P-B2 to P-B3, 7% from P-B3 to P-B4, 9% from P-B4 to P-B5. This progression is not surprising at all and was fully expected.

Side Effects: (ongoing) Sub-control group P-B5 and P-B4 subjects showed mild signs of increased saliva production, very mild hypersomnia was also registered curiously on P-B4. So far we have not registered additional side effects on this parcel.

Understandably we have been getting many questions regarding dosages. One thing that is important to note is that we are using dosages that are “in sync” with the weight, age, and metabolism of our subjects; the idea is to have a realistic simulation of the tests that will be conducted during the Human trials.
I will be posting the results on Parcel C sometime during next week. Jason asked me to talk about Cortisol, but I feel that it needs a separate post since it’s such an important and relevant subject, so expect an update on this very soon as well.

Astressin-B Research report – Norma – Parcel A

Jason Wats MD    Astressin-B, Research and latest Discoveries    

Right on time here is an update on project’s ongoing progress;

Currently we have 3 distinct sub-groups in Parcel A that are being given different dosage of the compound, while they are responding to the treatment, the impact is significantly different. As the dose decreases the results also decrease.  There is no substantial difference between the mid-level group and the group that is taking the highest dosage.

In regards to the highest group, 91% of the subjects have showed full recovery, which means they the hair count is a par to the isolated control group. 8% of the remaining subjects are showing significant regrowth, while 1% is showing moderate regrowth.

In the mid-level group 85% of the subjects have showed full recovery, 13% demonstrate significant regrowth, 2% are showing moderate regrowth.

In the lower dosage group 31% of the subjects have showed full recovery, 10% of the remaining subjects demonstrate significant regrowth, 41% are showing moderate regrowth, and 8% of the subjects did not show any signs of regrowth at all.

An interesting side note is that every subject suffering from Cushing’s syndrome has showed full recovery, regardless of the dosage that it was given, we will elaborate more on this in the next report.

Within Parcel B there are 5 sub-groups, each being given the same dosage of the compound. These groups have been divided CRF levels. We cannot get into specific results about this parcel since we are yet to process all of the data.

I asked Sarah to post a complementary report on Parcel B and C this week, she will also be covering the following issues; Cortisol levels, Why this experiment is relevant of Androgenic Alopecia patients and side effects,  so stay tuned.

p.s. you might have noticed the name “Norma”  in the title of the post, it is the internal “code” we have given to our research project, a mere triviality to most, but significant to us since it is  a tribute to someone very dear to our team that passed away last year.

Thymosin beta 4 – Professor Paul Riley’s lab

admin    Research and latest Discoveries    

A video of a research group that is very dear to us that is conducting very interesting research in the mechanisms of heart damage and repair, especially a protein called thymosin beta 4, some of our students have previously worked with Professor Paul Riley, the World needs more people like him.

Also, we will later post a topic on why we think that thymosin beta 4 can play an important role future hair loss treatments.

Research Project’s Schedule

Sarah Campeau    Astressin-B, Research and latest Discoveries    

Let me start by thanking everyone for the continuous support. We decided to share with all of you the schedule of our ongoing Research project just in case you would like to schedule your visits to our website.

Between 10^th and 15^th August: Project status update

Between 15^th and 1^th September: Final project status update

Between 1th and 15^th October: Preliminary Report

Between 15^th of October and 5^th November:  Public release of the final report

Between 1^th of December and 1^th March 2012: Human Trials Phase 1  (Subject to change) Not conducted by this Research group.

Human Trials

Sarah Campeau    Astressin-B, Research and latest Discoveries    

Since we have been getting a lot of questions about the possibility of our group conducting Human trial testing we decided to provide more information in this regard.

In order to conduct human testing of any kind there needs to be a licensing process that is not diligent and that we don’t feel prepared for.

That is not to say that we are not qualified to conduct the tests, as matter of fact Jason has lead numerous projects that involved human testing, but we feel the project would be better served if the Human trials were done by a team that was not involved in the initial research.

Rest assured that we have already two partners well positioned to carry out the testing on our terms. What does this mean? Well, it means that the laboratory that we will carry on our will not be allowed to patent the discovery, sell it or distribute it in any way.

We are looking for a treatment that has proven to work and brings consistent results, rushing things is not the solution.

Our team will also be directly involved with the Human trials, without interfering with the methodology of the laboratory.

Meaning and Purpose

Jason Wats MD    Research and latest Discoveries    

First and foremost allow me to thank all of our readers for supporting our RG, it’s been an amazing yet torturous journey with many sleepiness nights that we all believe will pay off in the end. Forgive me if my first intervention in the project’s blog seems rather harsh, but I need to state a couple of things for posterity.  This Blog is evidently intended to provide information and help people suffering from Hair Loss. Its second purpose is to provide logistical support to our projects and provide a way for us to publish ongoing progress and keep everyone involved.

We are really enjoying the interaction that we have been having with our readers; believe me when I say that we are doing this for you, as Sarah so elegantly put it, that is the main and sole purpose of this project, we are not associated in any way with private research laboratories, Pharmaceutical Companies, Angel investors, etc…It was regrettable to see our Sarah having a hard time responding to a few somewhat rude comments that were posted by someone who was clearly only motivated to create problems. This will not be acceptable; this Blog was not created with that intend, it exists to serve people who are looking for solutions rather than dwell on negativity. Our Research projects are conducted by scientists, not investors or pharmaceutical sales representatives. We produce reports not drugs, and we provide information based on experience not false expectations, assumptions or “hunches”.

I believe I can now safely use the word “community” when I refer to the small “ecosystem” that we have created in this blog, it’s so gratifying to know we have helped so many of you through our online consultation and hope to help many more.

Please bear with me while I take this opportunity to thank all the people who are support us and make all of this possible:

Dana Calis: your ability to withstand sleep deprivation without affecting your concentration baffles me!

Marc Rice: Thank you for attending so diligently my constant “pestering” for more and better equipment.

Haley Edwards: if you didn’t exist, we would be holding our experiments in my house basement.

Maria Sarah:  Thank you for helping all of us keep our sanity when things get dark.

Pedro Sttau: Thank you for giving us your techy/geeky expertise, paying for our server bills and putting up with our internet ignorance!

Our Readers / patients: you are our purpose.