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Hair Loss News Archives
December 2005
Fighting a 'losing' battle - Hair Loss
The Associated Press
NEW YORK --
Look around a crowd and you'll see that lots of middle-aged men are
losing their hair. As baby boomers, they have every right to demand: What is
science doing about this?
Quite a bit, it turns out.
A British company, for example, says five guys are walking around with hundreds
more hairs than they had before, thanks to an early test of what's been called
hair cloning. An American outfit hopes to start testing a similar approach next
year.
Other scientists are tracking down genes that make some men susceptible to hair
loss, and struggling to understand the mysterious biology behind it. For
example, how can men lose hair on the top of their heads while their beards and
even eyelashes keep going strong?
Black men are far less susceptible, but about a third of 30-year-old white men
have signs of what doctors call male-pattern baldness. By the time they're 50,
about half of them do. The condition creeps across the head like three tiny
armies bent on deforestation: one starting at the back, and two making inroads
from the front.
Sure, some men say bald is beautiful. And others can smear on minoxidil
(Rogaine) or take Propecia pills, or get hair transplants.
In fact, right now is "the best time in history to be going bald, because
there's an awful lot of things that can be done," says Dr. Ken Washenik of the
Aderans Research Institute in Philadelphia, which is investigating the "hair
cloning" approach.
But the drugs don't help everybody, and not everyone is interested in a
transplant. So there's room for new approaches.
To understand the search for new treatments, it helps to know a little about
hair and male-pattern baldness. (Women can also get hormone-induced baldness
like this, but it's not clear if it's really the same condition).
Everybody starts out with a lifetime supply of about 100,000 follicles on the
scalp, each primed to produce a single hair shaft. Normally, any given follicle
pumps out that shaft for two years to six years, then takes a break for a few
weeks. Then it sheds that hair, and starts the cycle over again.
Each day, we lose about 100 hairs this way. No big deal; about an equal number
of follicles enter the growth phase on the same day, and at any one time about
90 percent to 95 percent of the follicles are busy growing new hair.
But in some men, in selected places on the scalp, this orderly process goes
awry.
The hair-growing phase gets progressively shorter and the resting phase gets
longer. So the resulting hairs get shorter and shorter with each trip through
the cycle. Eventually, they don't even poke out through the scalp.
What's more, affected follicles take longer to start growing hair again after
they've shed the last one. And they shrink, so the hair they produce is finer.
On your head, it's like replacing mighty trees with saplings. And the total
number of remaining hairs slips by about 5 percent a year.
What causes this? The full picture isn't known, but it clearly involves a
combination of genetic susceptibility and hormones, including testosterone.
Researchers are eager to identify the biochemical actors within follicles that
could be manipulated to fight baldness. As for genetics, some studies have
implicated a particular gene that may be necessary to get the condition but not
sufficient to produce baldness on its own, said Stephen Harrap of the University
of Melbourne in Australia.
In all, it might take inheriting certain versions of about five genes to get the
condition, like getting a bad poker hand, suggested Rodney Sinclair of the
university.
In England, meanwhile, a company called Intercytex has just begun human studies
of an approach sometimes called hair cloning. It focuses on a particular kind of
cell, found at the base of the follicle, that can team up with skin cells to
produce new follicles.
Here's the idea: Extract some cells from the areas of a man's head that resist
balding, put them in a lab dish and expand their numbers by thousands of times.
Then inject these new cells back into the scalp, where they'll work with skin
cells to form new follicles. So, unlike transplants, the guy actually ends up
with more hairs than he started with.
The company has recently tested this on seven men with thinning hair due to
male-pattern baldness, and five of them gained hair, says Intercytex chief
scientific officer Paul Kemp. This was just an initial study to look for side
effects like inflammation, Kemp says, and no such problems appeared.
Not that this restored a full head of hair. The treated areas were just the size
of a quarter, and covered places that already had hair, rather than bald spots.
"We didn't want to create these weird and wonderful patterns on their head,"
Kemp said. "It's such a small area in the hairy area anyway, I would be
surprised if they really knew any difference."
Eventually, if further studies go well, the technique could allow hair
transplant surgeons to cover more of a bald head, Kemp said. The next round of
human research is expected to start next summer.
Someday, men might avoid transplants altogether, just getting periodic shots of
their own cells to counterbalance their hair loss. "You would be going thin, and
you'd be maintained," Kemp said.
"Sometime in the future, I think baldness will be a choice rather than something
you have to suffer," said Kemp. "Any bald people will have chosen to be bald."
Within five years, Kemp says, his company may have a commercial product.
Washenik, of the Philadelphia-based Aderans institute, said his group's efforts
in hair cloning have shown promise so far in mice. He hopes studies in people
can begin next year.
He said follicles that grow from the transplanted cells should resist balding,
because they come from a part of the head that balding doesn't touch. Ordinary
hair transplants show that follicles from these resistant regions stay resistant
even when planted in bald regions, he said. But even if the transplanted cells
do eventually succumb, "you've got years of hair on your scalp that's of benefit
to you," said Washenik, who also works for a hair transplantation business
called Bosley.
Ultimately, he said, scientists would love to accomplish the same goal with a
cream that can be smeared on the scalp and deliver just the right chemical
signals to stimulate new follicles to grow.
In any case, he said, it's not just about hair.
Hair follicles, after all, are organs. So what's learned from follicle research
may help other scientists who are working to regenerate bigger organs like the
liver and kidneys, Washenik said.
The same notion was expressed by Sinclair, who's testing a skin cream in mice
that may alter follicle behavior by fiddling with genes. (He says he can't
discuss the results because they are a commercial secret.)
Sinclair said follicle research allows scientists to approach not just organ
regeneration, but also questions about stem cells, cell growth and gene therapy
that may pay off someday in new treatments for diseases like cancer and
Alzheimer's.
"The idea of growing hair on a bald scalp is only of moderate interest,"
Sinclair said in a telephone interview. "If we find the cure for baldness we're
not going to stop studying hair."
That's just great, Doc.
But if you do find the cure for baldness, lots of men would like to know.