I have covered Dr. Alexey Terskikh (who works at the Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute in California) a few times in the past on this blog before. My main post on him and his pluripotent stem cell related work from almost exactly two years ago can be read here.
Recently, commentator “Sets” has contacted me a few times in order to see if I, with his help, can set up an interview with Dr. Terskikh. “Sets” is in regular touch with Dr. Terskikh on Facebook and has been acting as the in-between contact person between myself and the doctor/researcher.
I tried to contact Dr. Terskikh several times in the past, but he never responded until recently (and that to an e-mail I sent him 7 months ago after “Sets” asked him to look for it!). It seems like the doctor is easier to contact via Facebook, which I have not used in 1.5 years, so “Sets” is doing the grunt work for us. Please do not e-mail Dr. Terskikh as I am sure he gets 100s of them every day and is highly unlikely to respond in any great detail if at all.
In any event, if you have any questions that you want to ask Dr. Terskikh, please post them in the comments to this post and I will pick the most scientific/technical ones as well as the most interesting non-technical ones to ask him. Of course his willingness to respond will be dependent upon “Sets” much more so than upon myself:-(
On Twitter Dr. Terskikh has mentioned the need to raise $3 million to $5 million in funding in order to proceed with his team’s groundbreaking stem cell based hair growth related research. In his recent e-mail to me, he said they need $1 million to “quickly complete all preclinical studies and move into clinic“. As most us know, hair related research and clinical trial funding are never even a remote priority for governments, universities or scientific institutions. If any of the readers of this blog is super wealthy, maybe give away $1 million to Dr. Terskikh to speed things up for all of us.