Can these Technion students cure baldness?

Can these Technion students cure baldness?

University team aces international competition with an enzyme that promises to stop male pattern alopecia

BY SIMONA WEINGLASS November 24, 2015, 7:32 am
Source: timesofisrael.com

When 25-year-old Technion student Alexey Tomsov needed to come up with a project for the prestigious iGEM synthetic biology competition, he decided to untangle a problem close to home.

“My dad is bald, and I noticed my own hair is starting to thin,” said the recent graduate in biotechnology and food engineering. “I thought, ‘What can I do about this?’”

Tomsov looked at the products on the market and felt that none met his needs. A drug called Finasteride reduces hair loss but can cause serious sexual side effects. Other solutions are still in the research stages. Tomsov wanted to develop a topical solution that stops hair loss without affecting the rest of the patient’s body.

Male pattern baldness, also known as androgenetic alopecia, affects up to 70 percent of men and is believed to be caused by a derivative of testosterone called dihydrotestosterone (DHT). Tomsov and his team genetically engineered Bacillus subtilis, a bacterium found naturally on the scalp, to secrete 3α-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase, an enzyme that breaks down DHT. They also genetically engineered E. coli to enable the enzymatic reaction to take place. Using a comb, the two genetically engineered bacteria can be combined, causing a reaction that breaks down DHT on the scalp.

The Technion iGEM team traveled to Massachusetts in September for the 2015 international iGEM synthetic biology competition, where they competed with 259 undergraduate and high school teams from around the world. The team won an iGEM 2015 Jamboree gold medal and first-place prize for Best New Application.

Yael Annis, Maayan Lufton and Alexey Tomsov present at the iGEM conference in September (Facebook)

From students to startup entrepreneurs

Tomsov and his team of nine other students, Yael Annis, Tal Ofek, Roni Cohen, Adi Yannai, Ruth Veksler, Liron Abrahami, Ma’ayan Lufton, Nitzan Shmuel and Sagi Sheinkman, won’t have to search for jobs after graduation.

They have received an undisclosed amount of funding and assistance from the Technion to patent their technology and turn it into a startup.

“We still have more experiments to do before we can receive approval for human trials. We can’t say at this stage how effective our product is or any questions regarding the stages of baldness it will cure.”

But if successful, will the Technion students have discovered a cure for human baldness?

“This is a big statement,” says Tomsov, “but yes, let’s hope so.”

If so, it would be quite a breakthrough. Entire movie plots, like that of the 2009 thriller “Duplicity,” have revolved around the potential discovery of a cure for baldness. Tomsov says he expects the product will more likely help people who are just beginning to go bald rather than people who have been bald for many years.

Source: YouTube

“When the hair follicle deteriorates and shuts down there’s nothing we can do. When a person has been bald for ten years I’m not sure there’s a solution on the market aside from surgery.”

If readers want to be part of the clinical trials, they can contact the team through its Facebook page and will be notified if and when these trials begin.

As part of their market research, the Technion team surveyed men and women about their perceptions of baldness. The results among women were inconclusive, but the Technion students did find that a large percentage of men, especially young men, find the prospect of losing their hair upsetting.

Asked why, Tomsov replies, “it has something to do with their sense of pride, but we don’t have an answer. [Psychology] is not our field of study.”

Tomsov says that all ten members of the team are enormously proud of their accomplishment in the competition as well as the “pride we brought to Israel.”

Does this mean that Israel will provide the world’s answer to baldness and that boycotters of the country could find themselves hirsutely challenged?

Tomsov laughs. “Let’s hope we have peace by then.”

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Cloning: The future in hair transplants

Cloning: The future in hair transplants

Date: Visited September 7th, 2013
Source: ilterclinic.com

At the Ilter Clinic, we pay constant attention to new scientific and technical advancements in hair transplantation. We are also active in researching new progress in the field so that ever-better techniques may be developed in the future.



High-tech research is providing new hope. These methods are still far from becoming commercially available, but gene therapy and cloning may one day reduce limitations we face in the donor area.

Gene therapy

The idea behind gene therapy is to introduce new DNA into a patient’s hair cells. The new DNA would prevent cells from being affected by the DHT (dihydrotestosteron) hormone that causes Male Pattern Baldness.



However, the research is still in its infancy. Some genes have already been identified as the cause behind hair loss, but there are still many other factors to be considered. With this in mind, a great deal of research needs to be done before gene therapy becomes a reality.

Hair cloning

Cloning hair follicles is a new technology. Even though it is considered something of a Holy Grail for people suffering from hair loss because of the potential for an unlimited supply of hair from a single strand, cloning hair follicles is keenly debated. There have been exciting breakthroughs, but the method needs another ten years of research before it is commercially available.

There are two organizations seriously researching a commercially viable way to multiply hair loss-resistant donor follicles. They are Aderans, headquartered in Japan, and Intercytex, based in England.

Hair cloning is a lay term for tissue-developed hair growth. The approach being pursued involves extracting single hair cells from the hair loss-resistant donor area and attempting to replicate them in the laboratory. These "dermal papilla" cells mature into hair follicles in a process known as follicular neogenesis. If they can be stimulated to multiply, then theoretically there is no limit to the number of hair follicles that could be grown in the laboratory and transplanted onto a person’s scalp.



However, controlling the direction of new hair growth from cloned follicles has been problematic. Many people believe hair cell implants will initially be used as filler hair, primarily on the top and crown areas, while critical areas such as the hairline will continue to receive transplants using conventional FUE grafts. Also, the cost of this laboratory-intensive procedure is expected to exceed conventional hair transplantation when it is introduced.

At this point in time, it is not recommended that patients wait for cloning. If and when hair cell implants arrive in the future, they could well be used to create even greater levels of density and fullness behind the transplanted hairline.

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