In America the research involves the identification that wound tissue, which has hairs growing on it, regenerates hair follicles as the tissue begins to heal. The startling thing here is that the hair follicles are actually new items and not just rejuvenated old ones. The race is now on to try and understand how the tissue actually does this process. It has already been identified that stem cells present in the hair follicle bulge are capable of producing a range of skin cells including those in the follicles. However, it has also been shown that the hair follicles produced in wound tissue have arisen from ordinary skin cells. The wound tissue during the healing process somehow manages to generate chemical signals which are able to change these ordinary skin cells into new stem cells. It is these new stem cells that can then produce a range of cells including those that make up hair follicles.

The scientific research is now aiming at identifying the genes responsible for the production of these chemical messengers. Once these have been identified it should be theoretically possible to synthesise the messengers and thereby get ordinary skin cells in the scalp to produce new stem cells, which then go on to produce new hair follicles. Human trials are a long way off as work has only been done on transgenic mice so far. Transgenic mice have human DNA included in their make up so that their cells behave more like human ones.

In England the research that is being done is in the area of cloning hair follicles that already exist. The theory is that cells at the back of the head which continue to produce hair can provide the initial seed to clone more hair follicles. This method would therefore not work for people that are totally bald. The procedure begins with the removal of about one hundred dermal papillae cells from the back of the head. These cells are then grown in a special cell culture medium in the laboratory. During the growth process they also multiply many times in number. The resulting cells are then injected into the scalp in their millions and will go on to make the new hair follicles. The over all process is called follicular implantation. It is interesting to note that the injected cells are also capable of rejuvenating any hair follicles that are starting to shrink away. It may take up to one thousand small injections of the cell culture to get sufficient coverage on a very bald person. Although this method is actually at the stage of human trials and has had some success it may be a few years before the treatment becomes generally available.

Any baldness cure is usually looked on in a very sceptical way and that isn’t surprising given the history of quack treatments that have arisen over the years. These two ideas do seem to have some genuine science behind them and who knows, we may have that all important solution to this age old problem in just a few years. So, I for one am hoping that science will come through in the end.

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