Regenera Activa: autologous micro-grafting, without the overclaim

Regenera Activa is a process of autologous micro-grafting. Under local anaesthetic, two or three fragments of scalp two and a half millimetres across are taken, usually from behind the ear. Those fragments are placed in a single-use device which breaks them down and filters them, in a few minutes, to obtain a suspension of cells and matrix fragments. That suspension is reinjected immediately into the thinning areas.

Everything is done in the same session, with the patient's own tissue and nothing else. That is the technique's main argument: no outside product is introduced, so there is no question of a marketing authorisation as there is for exosomes, and no immunological risk.

What is actually injected

We must be precise here, because the commercial vocabulary is not always so. Selected and cultured stem cells are not what is injected. What is injected is a filtered homogenate containing living cells taken from around the follicle, fragments of extracellular matrix and the growth factors they release.

That is less spectacular than what one sometimes reads, and it remains interesting: these are precisely the elements the follicle recognises, since they come from its own surroundings.

Who it is for

The technique acts on follicles that are still present but weakened, the ones producing an ever finer hair. It recreates nothing where nothing is left.

It therefore has a place in early to moderate hair loss, in men as in women, and alongside a transplant. It has none in established baldness: on an area bare for years there is no follicle left to wake, and no injection will change that.

The level of evidence

It is intermediate. Stronger than that of mesotherapy, weaker than that of minoxidil. The published studies report an increase in density and a thickening of the hair, but they involve modest numbers and the follow-up rarely exceeds a year.

The open question is duration. The results seen at six and twelve months are real; what becomes of them at three years, without repetition, is unknown. An honest practitioner therefore presents Regenera as a treatment to be repeated, not as a one-off procedure.

How it goes

The session lasts about an hour. Local anaesthetic makes the sampling painless; the injections are unpleasant and no more. There is no social downtime: some redness, sometimes slight swelling, gone in a day or two. The sampling point leaves a two-millimetre mark, invisible under the hair.

The first effects can be judged from the third month, as with everything that touches the hair cycle. Before that there is nothing to see, and a patient who judges at six weeks is judging far too early.

Our position

Given this level of evidence, Regenera is not among the treatments the clinic favours today. It keeps to those whose efficacy is best established: finasteride and minoxidil against miniaturisation and for regrowth, and PRP, mainly after a transplant, to support healing and the recovery of the scalp.

And when a transplant is indicated, no injection should delay it: where baldness is concerned, time is not made up.