Have we stumbled on a cure for baldness - and grey hair?
Researchers might have stumbled on the key to curing grey hair – and perhaps even male pattern baldness.
Researchers from UT Southwestern Medical Center have identified cells that directly give rise to hair – and which stop working properly as people age.
The find could give rise to new treatments for greying hair and baldness, the researchers say.
Dr. Lu Le, at UT Southwestern said, ‘Although this project was started in an effort to understand how certain kinds of tumors form, we ended up learning why hair turns grey and discovering the identity of the cell that directly gives rise to hair.
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‘With this knowledge, we hope in the future to create a topical compound or to safely deliver the necessary gene to hair follicles to correct these cosmetic problems.’
DALLAS – May 5, 2017 – researchers have identified the cells that directly give rise to hair as well as the mechanism that causes hair to turn gray – findings that could one day help identify possible treatments for balding and hair graying.
The researchers found that a protein called KROX20, more commonly associated with nerve development, in this case turns on in skin cells that become the hair shaft.
UT Southwestern researchers will now try to find out if the KROX20 in cells and the SCF gene stop working properly as people age, leading to the graying and hair thinning seen in older people – as well as in male pattern baldness, Dr. Le said.
The research also could provide answers about why we age in general as hair graying and hair loss are among the first signs of aging.
