Looking To The Future For A Baldness Cure

The frontiers of modern medicine are always being driven forwards and new discoveries are being made on a daily basis. Despite this, the search for a baldness cure seems to have been remarkably slow. This is despite the number of people who would benefit and the huge fortunes that would be made on the back of a baldness cure. It is usual for research to develop very quickly when there is the prospect of a lot of money being made. At last science seems to be making some in roads towards the eventual production of a cure that will at least be acceptable to a large number of people suffering from baldness.

There are two main areas where scientific research is being driven at the moment. In America the ideas involve the stimulating of existing scalp tissues to produce brand new follicles which will replace those that have been lost. It has been found that stem cells present in the hair follicle bulge are capable of producing the cells necessary for producing a new hair follicle. Results were first seen in the healing process of skin wounds. These stem cells went on to produce the new skin cells and follicle cells as the wounded tissue began to heal. It has now been identified that the new stem cells actually come from the ordinary skin cells in the tissue. Somehow the wounded tissue produces chemical signals that are capable of changing ordinary skin cells into new stem cells which can then go on to produce hair follicle cells.

All work is now concentrating on the genes responsible for producing these chemical signals. Hopefully the ability to identify and then synthesise these chemical messengers in the laboratory would lead to the production of a medication able to repopulate the hair follicles in bald areas of the scalp. So far all research has been done on transgenic mice, which are mice that have sections of human DNA included in their make up so that the cells behave more like human cells.

In the UK, research is aimed at the cloning of existing hair follicles. These follicles would come from the back of the head where they continue to grow. The procedure is called follicular implantation and trials are already under way in humans. The procedure involves the extraction of about 100 dermal papillae cells from the back of the head. These cells are responsible for hair growth. The cells are then grown and multiplied, many times in number, in a special cell culture medium. These cultivated cells are then injected back into the scalp in their millions and will go on to produce the new hair follicle cells or rejuvenate hair follicles that have gone into decline. In very bald people it may take up to 1000 tiny injections of these cells into the scalp in order to produce the required number of replacement hairs and provide adequate coverage of the scalp. The actual widespread use of this technique is probably still 5 years away.

Clearly these two techniques would be a great advancement on existing transplant methods. There would be far less surgery used and this would help patient acceptability greatly. In the end we are all really looking for the magic solution that we can rub on our scalps and the hairs just appear over night. That would be a future baldness cure worth looking forward to.

By: Timoteus Vincent

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A baldness cure can come in so many different forms these days that it is difficult to make the right choices. Only with all of the facts at hand can people be expected to weigh up all the advantages and disadvantages without having to just accept sales hype. Further information on the alternatives for people looking into hair replacement and hair treatment can be found on T J Vincent’s web site Baldness cure