Explaining The Experimental Gene Therapy That Grows Hair

After gene therapy, we find thick fur on hairless mice. What does gene therapy promise? Is it a viable option for countering baldness?

Explaining The Experimental Gene Therapy That Grows Hair

What About Hair Follicles Do You Need To Know? 

A new finding of mice offers hope for rejuvenating barren hair follicles if you are hair impaired. 

The Johns Hopkins University lab of Catherine C. Thompson, Ph.D., comes with the findings. Why mice lacking the hairless gene are well, hairless, Thompson and colleagues wondered. 

Pointing researchers toward a way to regenerate the hair follicles of men and women with alopecia are their results. 

A Tiny Organ

It doesn’t happen that hair follicles come to be normal skin cells. They are observed to be tiny organs. They regenerate: which is that these tiny organs do one of the most amazing things any organ can do. 

Of course, hair cells grow hair. Whereas this comes to be just one phase of their life cycle. Eventually withering down to a shadow of its former self, is each follicle. Stem cells inside the follicle come to life as then somehow. Growing new hair, the follicle regenerates. 

Hair thinning or baldness results when something goes wrong with this process. Mice lacking the hairless gene is what researchers have a model for this. These mice grow normal-looking hair at first. The hair falls out and doesn’t grow back as their hair follicles cycle. 

To produce hairless protein in specific cells within the hair follicle,

Thompson’s team genetically engineered hairless mice. Mice that grew and kept growing thick fur was the result. 

When it gets the proper chemical signals at exactly the right time during the follicle cycle, the researchers showed that the Hairless gene only works. To know what these signals are and when to give them, now researchers are one step closer. 

In the early online edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is Thompson and colleagues reported their findings. 

Not Just For Baldness Is Hair Stem Cells

Developing into nerve cells are stem cells from mouse whiskers.

Researchers report stem cells from hair follicles can give rise to new nerve cells. 

They further report that the finding could then lead to a new accessible source of stem cells for therapeutic use. As they can develop various kinds of cells in the right conditions, stem cells have drawn a lot of attention. 

Reproducing themselves into various forms of the cells found within the same type of tissue are adult stem cells that are found in various tissues in the body. They may be able to develop new therapies to treat disease as researchers say by harnessing a stem cell’s natural ability to reproduce and replenish cells. 

In hair follicles from mice, in 2004, other scientists identified adult stem cells in hair follicles from mice adult stem cells. Transplanting them into hairless mice and seeing new hairs grow, they mixed those stem cells with skin cells. 

Indicating that stem cells from hair follicles can do more than make hair grow, is the new study now involving mice. 

Researchers put the stem cells into lab cultures and watched what happened over the next two months in this study. 

The stem cells started to give rise to cells surrounding a normal hair follicle within a week. Developing into nerve, muscle, and skin cells are they. 

Raising the Bar

Researchers went a step further next. Transplanting them into hairless mice, they took stem cells from the lab. 

Migrating into position under the skin of the mice, within a week the cells were on the move. The scientists say the cells had developed into nerve cells after 14 days. 

The researchers write that the hair follicle stem cells are relatively primitive. Letting them make different kinds of cells, not just the type seen in hair widens the cell’s range of possibilities. 

Yasuyuki Amoh of Japan's Kitasato University School of Medicine, San Diego's AntiCancer, Inc., and the University of California, San Diego was included amongst the researchers. Appearing in the early online edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences is the report. 

The Future Of Stem Cell Research

With many researchers staying put on stem cell research, there is more you need to know than you imagine. Finding it to be the promise of the future, stem cell research holds the promise. No matter what your condition is, there is one or more answers to the problem. So, you can relax when you face a hair problem. Research is targeting the hair when it comes to stem cell research for baldness. We promise you a bright future. 

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