This Follicle-Hacking Drug Could One Day Treat Baldness

The woman quit her job because of her hair loss. She was diagnosed with a disease that caused her hair to fall out. She wasn't sure how much more she could take from the people at her workplace. She decided to leave.

According to her doctor, who has changed her name to protect her privacy, she is not the only one with stress and anxiety over hair loss. He says that hair is a fundamental aspect of identity and intertwined with our body image and sense of self A person's life can be changed by hair loss.

More than 50 percent of women and 85 percent of men in the US are balding at some point in their lives. None of them work well, that's for sure. finasteride and minoxidil are approved by the FDA for the treatment of common hair loss, but they can cause side effects such as depression and decreased libido. Hair transplantation involves moving hair follicles from one part of the body to another. The procedure costs $4,000 to $15,000 out of pocket in the US and is limited by the amount of hair that can be moved. Most people can't do anything about their hair loss.

That may change in the near future. Maksim Plikus, professor of developmental and cell biology at the University of California, Irvine, and chief scientific officer of hair biotech company Amplifica, discovered the role of a signaling molecule in a study published in Developmental Cell. How physicians approach hair loss might be changed by thisprotein.

You can think of the hair on your head as a 3D printer. In order to create a full mop of hair, nearly all these follicles need to be continually printed. If 50 percent have switched off, the printers will shut down and lead to hair loss and balding. In order to restart the production line, stem cells can be found in people's hair.

He started his research because he wanted to better understand the cells at the bottom of the hair. His team used a genetic tool to target a signaling pathway that these cells use to drive hair growth. In a set of hairless mice, the goal was to keep this pathway on. The genetically modified mice began growing hair after he and his team got the tool to work.