Millions of men and women who suffer from premature baldness or hair loss could soon, in as little as five years time, be able to regain their original lustrous locks - by cloning their remaining hair in the laboratory, research suggests.
The new technique, known as “follicular cell implantation”, has already shown positive results in continuing clinical trials on human beings. The cell therapy has the potential to provide a limitless supply of an individual’s hair to replace that lost because of burns, cancer treatment or simply the onset of age, and could be available to patients within five years.
The latest results of the Phase II trial, presented at a conference of leading hair replacement surgeons in Rome, suggest that the technique can increase hair count in at least two thirds of patients after six months, and four out of five if the scalp is stimulated beforehand through gentle abrasions that encourage hair growth.
The technique involves extracting dermal papilla (DP) cells, the basic cells responsible for hair growth, from a sample of only about 100 hairs from the back of the scalp – the area where hair usually continues to grow despite losses in other areas. These cells are then multiplied many times over in a special culture before being injected back into the scalp in their millions, stimulating the formation of new hair follicles or rejuvenating those that have stopped producing hair on the top of the head.
The procedure is among many competing to find a cure for hair loss that affects 40 per cent of men over 50. Researchers from the US, Italy and Japan are also exploring the possibility of cloning hair, including techniques designed to extract stem cells from the base of the hair follicles.
Researchers are also experimenting with combining the DP cells with keratinocytes – the cells that produce keratin, the basic building material of hair – so that they could grow actual hairs for transplant, rather than injectable cells. This could further improve surgeons’ control over the amount, direction and appearance of the transplanted hair.