The breakthrough came in the early 2000s, when Japanese researchers found a way to turn any type of tissue into stem cells. There were imaginations that ran wild. Scientists realized they could make unlimited supplies of nearly any type of cell.
There is a problem of getting lab-grown cells back into the body because of the formula for producing specific cell types that can prove elusive. There have only been a few demonstrations of reprogrammable methods to treat patients. The researchers tried to transplant cells into people who were blind. In November of last year, a US company, Vertex Pharmaceuticals, said it might have cured a man of his Type 1 diabetes after an injection of programmed cells.
The concept being pursued by startup is to collect cells from patients and convert them into hair-forming cells. Stemson, a company with a name that is a portmanteau of stem cell and Samson, has raised $22.5 million, including from the drug company AbbVie. Hamilton says his company is reprogrammed cells onto the skin of mice and pigs to test the technology.
Both Hamilton and Lujan think there is a large market. Some men start to lose their hair in their 20s. Losing hair is a blow to a person's self- image.
These companies are bringing high-tech biology to the industry. There are many false claims about stem cells and hair loss remedies. Paul Knoepfler, a stem cell biologist at UC Davis, wrote in November that he had to be aware of scam offerings.
A close up of a skin organoid.
Is stem cell technology going to cure baldness or is it going to be a false hope? Stemson's founder, Hamilton, was invited to give the keynote at this year's Global Hair Loss Summit, and he tried to emphasize that the company still has plenty of research ahead of it. Many people have come in and said they have a solution. That has happened a lot in hair, so I have to address that. We are trying to project to the world that we are real scientists, but I can't guarantee it will work.
There are approved drugs for hair loss, but they are limited use. Another procedure involves a surgeon cutting strips of skin from a person with hair that is still growing. In the future, hair-forming cells grown in the lab could be added to a person's head with a similar surgery.
People will go to great lengths to get their hair back. Karl Koehler, a professor at Harvard University, says that it will be a very costly process at first.
Hair follicles are complex organs that arise from the interplay of several cell types. There are pictures of mice growing human hair. There is always a trick and a weakness to translate these images to humans.
Hair shafts are made by growing organoids. Organoids are small blobs of cells. He wanted to grow hair-like cells of the inner ear to study deafness cures. His organoids became skin, complete with hair follicles.
Koehler created spherical skin organoids which grow for about 150 days and become quite large. He says that the tube-like hair follicles are the same as the downy hair that covers a fetus.
The organoids grow backwards, with the hairs pointing inwards. Why they grow inside out is a big question, but you can see a nice architecture.
The Harvard lab reprograms cells from a 30-year-old Japanese man. It is looking at cells from other donors to see if organoids can lead to hair with distinctives colors and texture. There is demand for it. The companies that make cosmetics are interested. When they see the organoids, their eyes light up.
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