Researchers have hair sprouting on Bald Skin - Spiegel Online

hair loss makes million people in Germany alone to create. According desires would be an antidote. So far, however, there is – apart from supposed miracle cures – nothing could halt the loss of tuft

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But now researchers have published the results of an experiment that at least the hope of success in the fight against baldness awakens -. although the use of the people, because if it ever comes, is likely still far in the future

The team led by Angela Christano of New York’s Columbia University has transplanted cells in human skin, from which new hair follicles are formed. This is a process that usually takes place in the body just before birth or after injury. As the researchers write in the American journal “Proceedings of the National Academy,” they have removed the cells from the part of the hair follicle, the hair formation and growth controls. Then you’ve increased the cells in laboratory cultures and on a piece of human skin, which was transplanted on the back of a mouse transplanted.

Until now, a hair transplant, as they have the football coach Juergen Klopp and probably the FDP politician Christian Lindner them carried out, the only way the medicine to make the hair appear fuller. In this method, the follicles are cut at the back of the scalp and earlier replanted. However, a prerequisite for the engagement that patients have sufficient hair follicles. This condition does not apply to the new method to grow hair-forming cells and then transplant.

“About 90 percent of women with hair loss are eligible for a transplant out of the question because they have not enough hair that can be transplanted,” said dermatologist Christiano. With the new method, however, could give rise to a large number of new hair follicles with cells of the patient from a few hundred hairs.

Teardrop rather flat cultures

The scientists from the University of Durham, who were involved in the study, research claims to have been around 40 years to clone human hair cells. So far in vain: because they cultivated the cells in two dimensions as a monolayer in a Petri dish, they always had turned back into normal skin cells in the multiplication on the flat cultures in the laboratory, said Colin Johada, one of the authors of the technical paper. Only when they approached the cells cultured in three-dimensional teardrop shape, they would keep their hair-forming properties.

In rodents, it was some years ago no longer a problem to grow hair follicles to grow and transplant. The researchers observed that the animal cells clumped in contrast to the human during the cultivation. They concluded that the aggregation would be their own extracellular environment, through which the cell retains its properties.

To verify their hypothesis, the scientists withdrawals cell material of seven male donors with hereditary hair loss. They multiplied the cells and transplanted them after a few days into the human skin on the backs of mice. Add to admit no extra hair growth promoting agents, formed in five of seven cases, within six weeks of new hair follicles. DNA testing showed that this human origin and were genetically matched to the respective donors. “This approach could change the medical treatment of hair loss,” Christiano said. Current therapies might only delay the hair loss or stimulate the growth of existing hair follicles.

However, the scientists also found that the hairs were not partially been strong enough to penetrate all layers of the skin. It also lacks substantial evidence to date to before the procedure could be tested on humans. “We need to explore the specific critical properties of the newly implanted hair such as color, direction of growth and surface structure,” said Johada.

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