Wake-up call to genes may lead to cure for baldness

WOW! Maybe now all of the bald Congress members who voted against scientists using embryonic stem cells will change their vote to get their hair back. ---BBB

Wake-up call to genes may lead to cure for baldness
By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor
Published: 17 May 2007
Independent UK

There is new hope for the follicly challenged. Scientists have found a way to regenerate hair follicles which may lead to a cure for baldness - and a bonanza for its inventors.

By reawakening genes once active only in developing embryos, they have stimulated cells in the skin to grow new hair follicles - promising to turn a polished scalp into a good thick rug.

The discovery promises a solution for the estimated 35 million balding Americans - and millions more in the UK and around the world - who spend $1.5bn (£750m) a year on hair-restoration products, drugs and transplant surgery.

A US company, Follica Inc, has licensed the technology from the University of Pennsylvania, where the discovery was made, in the hope of developing new treatments for hair loss and acne.

The problem has defied the efforts of hair technologists for decades, despite the investment of huge sums of money. The traditional treatment for hair loss has been to transplant hair from another site - normally the back or sides of the head - on to the scalp.

As well as giving a crude result, the technique is limited by the quantity of hair available - there is never enough to do a decent job.

Experiments at the University of Durham in the UK published in 1990 proved that hair cells could be stimulated to multiply in the test tube, but in doing so they lost the capacity to develop into hair follicles. Scientists have been looking ever since for the magic ingredient that would trigger regeneration of hair follicles.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania believe they may have found it. In experiments on mice they have shown that when a wound heals, instead of forming scar tissue it can be stimulated to regenerate skin complete with hair follicles and oil glands by introducing proteins involved in hair follicle development (known as "wnt" proteins).

The researchers say wound healing offers a window of opportunity, when the skin is returned to an embryonic state which makes it receptive to the influence of the proteins.

George Cotsarelis, who led the study published in Nature and is a co-founder of Follica, said: "We have found that we can influence wound healing with 'wnts' or other proteins that allow the skin to heal in a way that has less scarring and includes all the normal structures of the skin, such as hair follicles and oil glands, rather than just a scar."

By introducing more wnt proteins to the wound, the researchers were able to double the number of new hair follicles. The research has implications that go beyond finding a cure for male-pattern baldness. It raises the possibility of treatments foracne, scalp conditions and hair overgrowth.

British experts hailed the breakthrough yesterday. Dr Denis Headon, a lecturer in developmental biology at the University of Manchester, said: "We thought the number of hair follicles we have is set before we were born and can only go downhill from there. This work shows that new hair follicles are made in adult skin, at least when it is healing a wound. The researchers also found a way to artificially soup up this natural process... by giving the skin a molecular signal. The implication is that it might be simpler than we thought to make new hair follicles as a treatment for hair loss."

The bald facts

* More than 30 per cent of men face balding before old age

* Of 100,000 strands of hair on the average head, at least 10,000 are in the process of dying

* It takes up to six months for a follicle to produce a new hair

* Male pattern baldness is the most common: hair recedes from the temples, forehead and crown. An excess of testosterone in the body is thought to be the cause

* Effects of hair loss can be minimised by using hair thickeners to add body to remaining hair

* Some specialists recommend massaging and stretching the skin of the scalp to promote blood flow to the follicles

* Drugs used to treat baldness include Regaine and Propecia. Both require a prescription and neither is available free on the NHS

* Hair transplants are the most expensive solution, costing about £10,000