Gene Research Gives Hope of Reversing Baldness

Hair loss in humans might not be irreversible, suggest scientists who have helped create new hair cells on the skin of mice. It was thought hair follicles, once damaged, could never be replaced. A University of Pennsylvania team, writing in the journal Nature, say hair growth can actually be encouraged using a single gene.

Comments

Wikipedia

[zymano]

Has some latest research links.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baldness#Latest_resea rch

They found some genes from Russians. Now they need to work on the drugs. Said something about enzymes being key.

Gene therapy is so uncool... graze your head!

[Kensai7]

Funny thing though. In this week's Nature there is this article where American scientists speculate on an alternative method to promote de novo follicle growth [in mice] via... grazing of the scalp.

I quote the scoop from the New Scientist's entry:
Could a graze on the head help cure baldness? Biologists had thought that once mammals lose their hair follicles, they are gone forever. Now George Cotsarelis at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia and his colleagues have shown that adult mice can regenerate follicles when their skin is wounded.

The team cut out a square centimetre of skin from the backs of mice two weeks after their hair follicles had formed. After 14 to 19 days the wounds had closed and formed new. When the researchers added Wnt proteins - signalling molecules usually involved in embryonic development - the number of follicles doubled and the skin healed with less scarring. This suggests that wound healing may trigger an embryonic state in skin, says Cotsarelis. Surprisingly, the new follicles originate from stem cells that are not usually involved in creating hair follicles.

Cotsarelis hopes the findings could lead to new therapies for baldness. "The idea would be to disrupt the skin to trigger the embryonic pathways, and then come in with the Wnt proteins," he says.

Hmm

[mapkinase]

First, as usual, missing ref to orig article in Nature. Now to the article:

hair growth can actually be encouraged using a single gene.

If you look at corresponding KEGG entry for gene Wnt10b that was expressed in regenerated follicles you will find that besides Wnt signalling pathway[PIC!] (also here) mentioned in the paper. this particular gene is also involved in Basal cell carcinoma pathway.

Both pathways are cancer-related and the first one is fairly complex, so there will be (hopefully) a lot of (lengthy) research intended to find out possible side effects.