May 17, 2007

scientists react to stem cell hair breakthrough

The breakthrough, published in the journal Nature, was the discovery that new hair follicles can form from stem cells in adult mammals.

Prof Desmond Tobin, Professor of Cell Biology and director of the Medical Biosciences Research Group, University of Bradford, said:

“This paper by Ito and colleagues provides convincing evidence that the skin has remarkable powers of regeneration, not just repair as previously known. It was long thought that hair follicle development, under physiological conditions, was limited to early developmental process in the embryo. Now Cotsarelis’ team have convincingly shown that under the conditions peculiar to the wound-healing environment, the highly complex hair follicle can be created anew from apparently unremarkable cells of the healing epidermis and its underlying dermis. The implications of this observation are manifold, but principally perhaps for what it tells us about the reprogramming power of adult stem cells, and it applications in regenerative medicine and wound healing.”

Dr Denis Headon, Lecturer in Developmental Biology, University of Manchester, said:

“Up to now we thought that the number of hair follicles we have is set before we were born and can only go downhill from there. This work shows that new hair follicles are made in adult skin, at least when it is healing a wound. The researchers also found a way to artificially soup up this natural process, causing mice to grow twice as many new hairs by giving the skin a specific molecular signal. The implication is that it might be simpler than we thought to make new hair follicles as a treatment for hair loss.”