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Scientists have for the first time 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 around the world - who spend $1.5 billion a year on hair-restoration products, drugs and transplant surgery.
A US company, Follica, 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, normally from 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 thorough job. The aim has been to get the hair cells to multiply.
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.
Now 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 Costarelis, 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. Conversely, blocking wnt proteins halted follicle production.
The research also raises the possibility of treatments for other follicle-related disorders, scalp conditions and hair overgrowth.
British experts have also hailed the breakthrough.
Dr Denis Headon, lecturer at the University of Manchester, said: "Up to now we thought that 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 [in mice] by giving the skin a specific molecular signal. The implication is that it might be simpler than we thought to make new hair follicles as a treatment for hair loss."
- INDEPENDENT
