The sight of a receding hairline is known to strike fear into the hearts of men. In fact, a recent survey of 2,000 men in the U.K. found balding to be the No. 1 fear in growing old.
However, according to UCalgary’s Jeff Biernaskie’s research findings — that identifies the existence of a skin (dermal) stem cell that may be targeted to stimulate new hair growth — this unfortunate middle-age milestone may become a thing of the past.
“When you lose your hair, particularly in male pattern baldness, we know the reason you go bald is because of dysfunction of these cells in this group, this dermal papilla,” says Biernaskie, PhD, assistant professor in stem cell biology at the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine. “So, if you look at follicles from bald skin, there’s either a huge loss in the number of cells that are there or they’ve atrophied and shrunken so they’re not functioning in the same way.”
By labelling cells in the dermal sheath, Biernaskie’s team discovered that a small number of dermal sheath cells could self-renew and give rise to hundreds of new (functionally diverse) cells in each hair follicle. This discovery gives researchers a greater understanding of how these follicles regenerate and it opens the door to creating therapies targeting stem cells to restore hair growth.
It could be a decade before such therapies are developed, but Biernaskie says having definitive evidence that a dermal stem cell exists, is crucial to future treatments. U