A Baldness Cure Using Stem Cells? Is this really possible? Scientists have learned that the follicle stem cells in men who are predisposed to pattern baldness do not develop normally. This breakthrough discovery provides a starting point for creating strategies to cure baldness.
Research was conducted on subjects who had androgenetic alopecia, or more commonly known as male-pattern baldness. The investigation consisted of examining the cells of hair follicles from balding scalp areas and from hairy areas. Hair follicles are the small structures from where the hair strand grows.
Researchers put the scalp cells through a machine tagging every cell with a marker. Different markers were used to differentiate between stem cells and hair follicle progenitor cells.
Results indicated that there were the same number of stem cells in the skin from bald scalps as there were in the skin from the hairy scalps.
The results revealed that the balding scalp areas consisted of immature stem cells. The only cell that appeared in smaller numbers was the progenitor cell. The data suggests that the lack of progenitor cells in the balding samples causes the stem cells to remain immature, thus not advancing to the next stage which would be that of producing hair.
More research done at the University of Pennsylvania and published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation states that the diminishing size of the hair follicles could be the reason there are far fewer progenitor cells. The size is microscopic.
There are two treatments that are being discussed. One option would be to produce a topical application such as a cream that would re-stimulate the cells and permit hair to grow again. A kind of chemical indicator would need to be discovered. A second would involve removing the stem cells from the bald scalp, treat them in the lab, and transplant them back into the scalp. Talk is that the remedy could become available to the public within the decade and some doctors even speculate that human trials could begin in the next year or two.
Stem cells have the fascinating ability to turn into any other cell in the body. The term for this is pluripotent.
Fifty million men in the US suffer from baldness. A cure for baldness would most certainly have many of these men purchasing that cure. Today combating hair loss is a one billion dollar a year industry.
Men have a fifty percent chance of getting hair loss by the time they are fifty years old.
The interest is high and a company has already begun the steps on paper at least to manufacture the product.
By introducing a topical product to the market this will be paving the way for other stem cell products to be accepted on the market. The public is not entirely comfortable with the mass use of stem cells because of concerns that it is being extracted from umbilical cords. The marketing will have to specifically allay any fears the consumer may have about the origin of the stem cells. These cells are not originating from umbilical cords.
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Due to this the likelihood of scarring is less but regrowth is still limited. With Doctor.
‘Even Colin Jahoda disclosed in his studies that human Dermal Papilla cells can't produce a hair but an outer root sheath…’.