Baldness: a hair closer to the cure
A team of scientists from New York’s Columbia University and Durham University in the U.K. have found an unprecedented way of generating hair growth.
Currently, the standard practice to treating baldness involves taking hairs from a thick part of the scalp—usually the back—and shifting it to the front. The procedure is simply a matter of redistributing the hair but can take all day and leave large scars from where the hair was taken.
New research increases amount of hair follicles
A new technique, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal on Monday, involves growing additional brand new hair follicles, which would increase the amount of hair, instead of just moving around the same number of existing hair from one part of the scalp to another.
“This is the first time it’s (hair) been generated in an entirely human-to-human context,” said Dr. Angela Christiano, senior author of the study.
Hair regeneration successful on rats, but not humans, 40 years ago
Forty years ago, scientists found that if they removed the dermal papilla cell—a small stem cell at the base of the hair follicle—grew it in culture and implanted the cells back in the skin, it would result in a completely newly regenerated hair growth. This experiment only worked on rodent skin, however. When the same technique was applied to human hair cells and skin, nothing happened.
Dr. Colin Jahoda from Durham University, one of Dr. Christiano's colleagues in the study, noticed the clumps in which the rat cells grew, but the human cells did not. He reasoned that this might be the difference. He decided, instead of growing the papilla cells in the regular petri dish method, he would put droplets of the cells on a dish and flip it over so they were hanging upside down.
Human dermal papilla cells needs 3D, not 2D growth
Turns out this was the key difference that scientists needed. With gravity pulling the droplets down (but it wasn't so heavy that it would drip off the dish), the cells were able to touch each other and grow in three dimensions instead of the standard two dimensional growth in tissue culture.
The researchers cloned dermal papillae cells from seven human male donors and grew it in culture (upside down). The cells were transplanted into the owners' skin after a few days. Of the seven men, five had new hair that grew and lasted for six weeks. The DNA of the the new follicles matched their human donors.
Could possibly help people with premature balding as well as burn victims
The researchers hope to conduct more trials until their success rate is 100 per cent. They are still researching the properties of the newly-engineered hair such as hair cycle kinetics, color, angle, positioning, and texture.
Eventually, this information can be applied to epidermal cells, as well. "This work could create a skin substitute for skin grafts for patients... and provide a better, more functional skin," said Dr. Jahoda. "It's not just hair follicle replacement, it’s skin replacement."