Bald truth: plucking hair out can stimulate growth, study finds

Bald truth: plucking hair out can stimulate growth, study finds

Hannah Devlin, science correspndent

@hannahdev Thursday 9 April 2015 17.02 BST Last modified on Thursday 9 April 2015 17.03 BSTSource: theguardian.com  

Although it seems counterintuitive, tests indicate that plucked follicles ‘communicate’, causing an immune response that leads to regrowth

Could this discovery be used to tackle baldness and alopecia? 
Tests are at an early stage, but could provide a solution in the future. Photograph: Asger Carlsen/Getty Images

Baldness is often dreaded by men and there are few, if any, satisfactory options for reversing it. Now scientists have discovered a potential solution, after showing that plucking hair out could actually stimulate growth.

The counterintuitive discovery, in mice, demonstrates a previously unknown method for triggering hair regeneration. Although the work is at an early stage, the authors believe the same process could be helpful for tackling hair loss in men or people with alopecia.

Philip Murray, of Dundee University and a co-author, said the findings now need to be tested in people. “It would be a bit of a leap of faith to expect this to work in bald men without doing more experiments,” he said.

The study found that when hairs were plucked in a specific configuration, follicles in the skin were prompted to send out a “distress” signal that led to even more hairs growing back. Plucking our 200 hairs triggered the growth of up to 1,200 replacement hairs in the mice, the study found.

Tests showed that the plucked follicles signal distress by releasing inflammatory proteins, which cause immune cells to rush to the site. In turn, these send out signals to all neighbouring follicles indicating that it is time to grow more hair.

“We’ve made a discovery about how hair communicates when it’s distressed,” said Murray.

The study, published in the journal Cell, showed that the pattern in which the hair was plucked played an important role in the strength of the “distress” signalling process. The researchers tested this by plucking 200 hair follicles, one by one, in different configurations on the back of a mouse. When plucking the hairs in a low-density pattern from an area more than six millimetres across, no hairs regenerated. However, higher-density plucking from circular areas with diameters between three and five millimetres triggered the regeneration of between 450 and 1,300 hairs – and the regeneration sometimes spilled out beyond the plucked area.

The authors believe that hair follicles do not simply respond individually to being plucked, but also communicate between themselves - something called “quorum sensing” - and effectively make a group decision about the level of immune response that is necessary. In the case of widely spaced plucking, the follicles are too far apart to be able to signal collectively. However, when the damage is tightly packed a more extreme response is mounted, leading to much stronger hair regrowth.

A potential drawback in balding men might be that their hairs are already too sparsely spaced for the approach to be helpful.

“It is a good example of how basic research can lead to a work with potential translational value,” said Cheng-Ming Chuong, professor of pathology at the University of Southern California and lead author.

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Bioengineered Follicles Grow Hair On Bald Mice

Bioengineered Follicles Grow Hair On Bald Mice

Published: Saturday 21 April 2012 at 12am PST
Source: medicalnewstoday.com

In a proof of concept study for bioengineered organ replacement, researchers in Japan made hair follicles derived from adult stem cells interact with surrounding tissue and show normal hair cycles, when transplanted into the skin of bald mice.

Takashi Tsuji, a Professor in the Research Institute for Science and Technology, Tokyo University of Science, and Director of Organ Technologies Inc, led the team, who report their findings in an open access paper published in Nature Communications on 17 April.

The study is significant on two counts: first it used adult stem cells and not embryonic stem cells, and second, the bioengineered follicles were fully functional and integrated into surrounding tissue, something that has not been managed before.

Not only does the study raise hopes of a cure for baldness, the researchers say it also represents a significant advance toward the next generation of "organ replacement regenerative therapies" that will enable the replacement of organs damaged by disease, injury or aging.

The researchers bioengineered hair follicle germ cells, the cells that mature into cells that grow hair, from two other types of cell: adult epithelial stem cells and dermal papilla cells.

They implanted the bioengineered cells into the skin of hairless mice and showed that they went on to have normal hair cycles, where after dead hairs fell out, new ones took their place.

The cells also showed other signs of normal functioning, such as piloerection, where the hair "stands on end" as a result of contraction of tiny surrounding muscles.

The authors write that the bioengineered follicles showed these restored functions "through the rearrangement of follicular stem cells and their niches". This is important because the "niches", a loose term to describe the microenvironment of stem cells, are what regulate normal stem cell behavior: for instance, they decide when to wake up stem cells to mature into fully formed follicles.

As well as demonstrating normal functioning, the bioengineered hair follicles developed the correct structures and made the right connections with surrounding tissue, including the epidermis, arrector pili muscles (the ones that produce piloerection) and nerve fibers.

The authors write:

"... our findings indicate that it is possible to not only restore a hair follicle but also to re-establish successful connections with the recipient skin by intracutaneous transplantation of the bioengineered follicle germ."

In their discussion they conclude:

"These findings significantly advance the technological development of bioengineered hair follicle regenerative therapy", and make a substantial contribution that will "enable future regenerative therapy for hair loss caused by injury or by diseases such as alopecia and androgenic alopecia".

They call for further studies to find out how to optimize human hair follicle-derived stem cell sources for clinical applications, and for further investigations of stem cell niches, as these will contribute to the "development of hair regenerative therapy as a prominent class of organ replacement regenerative therapy in the future".

Written by Catharine PaddockPhD

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Scientists Grow New Hair In A Lab, But Don't Rush To Buy A Comb

Scientists Grow New Hair In A Lab, But Don't Rush To Buy A Comb  

by Michaeleen Doucleff

October 21, 2013 5:27 PM

Source: npr.org



 

Maybe someday Jerry won't be laughing

at George's follicularly challenged scalp.

 But despite scientific advances there's

still no cure for baldness.

NBC/NBC via Getty Images

With a tiny clump of cells from a man's scalp, scientists have grown new human hair in the laboratory.

But don't get too excited. A magic cure for baldness isn't around the corner. The experimental approach is quite limited and years from reaching the clinic — for many reasons.

The scientists have grown the hair only on a tiny patch of human skin grafted onto the back of a mouse. And as wispy locks go, the strands are pretty pathetic. Some hairs were white, and some didn't even make their way out of the skin.

Nevertheless, the proof-of-concept study, reported Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, overcame a major obstacle to increasing the quantity of hair on your head.

Currently, people with hair loss have two options: drugs and surgical transplantation. "The drugs available work reasonably well at maintaining the hair you have," says Angela Christiano, a professor of dermatology at Columbia University Medical Center who led the study. "And with transplantation, you can move hair around the head, like from front to back. But neither [method] is known for being a way to actually grow new hair."

For that, scientists needed a way to make new hair follicles.

All human hair grows inside follicles, which are little tubes. When you're a baby developing inside the womb, cells in the skin decide where to put the follicles — and thus, your hair. Follicles go on legs, arms and head. But you don't get any on your palms, the soles of your feet and a few other places.

Once you're born, this pattern of hair doesn't change. The follicles may decide to go kaput later in life or start producing peach fuzz, as with male pattern baldness. But your skin never makes new follicles.

That's where Christiano and her team at Columbia University have made progress. Working together with Colin Jahoda in Durham University in England, they figured out a way to trick adult skin into growing new follicles and eventually new hair.

They took a special type of skin cell from seven men with male pattern baldness and grew them up in a Petri dish. Previous studies had just let the cells replicate on a 2D surface, but Christiano and her colleagues coerced the cells into clumping together and forming little balls. That slight variation made all the difference in the world.

The team put the spheres of cells inside a patch of human skin and grafted it onto a mouse. Six weeks later, the cells grew whole new hair follicles and tiny wisps of hair. The procedure worked in five of the seven men tested.

But the hair follicles weren't normal. They were missing sebaceous glands that keep the skin moist. And the hair grew out of the skin at funny angles.

"Before we can move into clinical trials, the procedure would have to be animal-free," Christiano says. "And we need much more hairs than we have. But conservatively, I'd love to have the method in clinical trials in three to five years."

Other scientists in the field are a bit more cautious.

"You can ask anyone how long it will take something in the future to happen, and the answer will always be three to five years," says Luis Garza, a dermatologist at Johns Hopkins University who wasn't involved in the study.

"Any time you grow cells in the laboratory and inject them back inside people, there's a chance the cells could overgrow," Garza tells Shots. That means the cells could form tumors or even some cancers. Plus, a technique like this, Garza speculates, would be much more expensive than regular hair transplantation.

Nevertheless, the findings are a major advance in the field, he says. "Before this method goes into clinical trials, we've got a mountain climb,and it's miles of steep terrain ahead," he says. "But the findings of Dr. Christiano definitely get us closer."

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Hair loss study ‘an important step’

Hair loss study ‘an important step’

Monday 21st October 2013, 11:30AM BST.
Source: thisisguernsey.com

 

A new study has raised hopes of a new treatment for hair loss.

 

A pioneering technique that generates new hair follicles could help to banish baldness, research suggests.

For the first time, scientists have shown that it is possible to renew follicles capable of sprouting human hair.

The follicles grow naturally from clumps of cells called dermal papillae that play a pivotal role in hair growth.

Scientists harvested dermal papillae from seven human donors, cloned them in the laboratory, and transplanted them into human skin grafted onto the backs of mice.

In five of the tests, the transplants resulted in new hair growth that lasted at least six weeks. DNA analysis confirmed that the new hair follicles were human and a genetic match to the donors.

Although the research is at an early state, the British and American team is confident clinical trials could begin “in the near future”.

Professor Angela Christiano, from Columbia University Medical Centre in New York, said: “Current hair-loss medications tend to slow the loss of hair follicles or potentially stimulate the growth of existing hairs, but they do not create new hair follicles. Neither do conventional hair transplants, which relocate a set number of hairs from the back of the scalp to the front.

“Our method, in contrast, has the potential to actually grow new follicles using a patient’s own cells. This could greatly expand the utility of hair restoration surgery to women and to younger patients – now it is largely restricted to the treatment of male-pattern baldness in patients with stable disease.”

Dermal papillae are small cells found at the base of hair follicles. The research develops earlier work led by Professor Colin Jahoda at the University of Durham showing that in rodents dermal papillae could easily be harvested and transplanted back into the skin.

In rodents, the transplanted cells tended to clump together spontaneously and reprogramme the recipient’s skin to grow new hair follicles.

The new research followed the lessons learned in rodents by encouraging human cells to clump together in the same way.

“Dermal papilla cells give rise to hair follicles, and the notion of cloning hair follicles using inductive dermal papilla cells has been around for 40 years or so,” said Prof Jahoda, who co-led the research published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“However, once the dermal papilla cells are put into conventional, two-dimensional tissue culture, they revert to basic skin cells and lose their ability to produce hair follicles. So we were faced with a Catch-22: how to expand a sufficiently large number of cells for hair regeneration while retaining their inductive properties.”

The technique may offer new hope to women as well as men who suffer from baldness, say the scientists. It also raises the prospect of new treatments for burns victims.

“About 90% of women with hair loss are not strong candidates for hair transplantation surgery because of insufficient donor hair,” said Prof Christiano. “This method offers the possibility of inducing large numbers of hair follicles or rejuvenating existing hair follicles, starting with cells grown from just a few hundred donor hairs. It could make hair transplantation available to individuals with a limited number of follicles, including those with female-pattern hair loss, scarring alopecia, and hair loss due to burns.”

Prof Jahoda said more work was needed to explore the properties of hair generated by newly grown follicles, and the interaction between transplanted dermal papillae and host cells.

He added: “Ultimately we think that this study is an important step toward the goal of creating a replacement skin that contains hair follicles for use with, for example, burn patients.”

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