HairClone Follicle Banking

Freeze healthy hair follicles today in readiness for possible thinning hair in the future. And, when needed, your harvested follicles are defrosted so cell therapies can rebuild (clone) new miniaturising hair roots matching your DNA, for implanting.

As an official partner clinic with HairClone, Elscott Medical applies this advanced technology to harvest vibrant, androgen-insensitive follicles that contain a high density of Dermal Papilla (DP) cells. Early banking ensures cells are preserved at their highest biological potency.

For your initial consultation at our Glasgow clinic, our Hair Transplant Doctor will evaluate your donor area under high-power trichoscopy to confirm your suitability clinical follicle banking.

Using HairClone technology, we extract a small sample of your naturally DHT-resistant donor follicles—which retain their DP cells—so they can be safely cryopreserved. When expanded cell therapies become clinically available, these banked cells will be multiplied a thousand-fold in a licensed GMP facility and we, or a future hair transplant clinic of your choosing, will implant into thinning scalp areas to restore thick, healthy hair growth.

Follicle harvesting for cryo-banking is a swift, comfortable micro-procedure conducted under gentle local anaesthetic at our Glasgow clinic. After identifying a discrete donor site at the back of your head, our Hair Transplant Doctor extracts approximately 100 healthy hair follicles using ultra-fine micro-FUE tools. Because only a tiny sample of grafts is taken, your donor area remains visually unchanged.

Immediately following extraction, your harvested follicles are placed into specialised temperature-controlled containers and dispatched to Tissue & Cell Technologies UK, the world’s first dedicated hair follicle bank. There, your tissue is frozen in liquid nitrogen. Once clinical cell-expansion therapies are cleared for deployment, your frozen follicles will be thawed and processed to multiply your DP cells by x1,000 times whereupon the healthy DP-identical follicle cells are micro-injected into thinning parts of your scalp to rejuvenates hundreds of existing, miniaturising hair follicles so they produce thick hair again.

Because we extract only around 100 microscopic grafts, recovery is rapid. The micro-extraction points close and heal within 48 to 72 hours without leaving linear scars or noticeable donor thinning. Most patients return to normal daily routines the following day, keeping the small donor area clean according to our simple aftercare instructions.

While follicle banking is an immediate service, the cell-multiplication injections represent an upcoming therapeutic pipeline which, once fully deployed, sees autologous DP cells injected into your scalp to reprogram and ‘reboot’ miniaturised, weak hairs. The expected outcome, will be thick, terminal hairs with long-lasting results and no requirement for daily maintenance or risk of cellular rejection.