Hair we go again! Freeze follicles to fight baldness

YOUNG men can for the first time freeze their hair follicles as an insurance policy in case they go bald.

The Human Tissue Authority is reported to have given a Manchester company authorisation to set up the world’s first hair bank.

From next week, men over 18 will be able to pay around £2,000 to store hair follicles, just as women freeze their eggs to start a family when they are older.

The follicles can be used to create stem cells which can be used to promote hair growth later in the patient’s life.

This would be a less painful alternative to hair transplants and may avoid the side effects of using powerful drugs such as finasteride to stimulate growth. However, experts caution that research does not yet show cloned cells work for baldness.

At the follicle bank, which is also open to women concerned about hair loss, a patient will have about 100 hair follicles taken from the back of their head. The procedure can be carried out in less than an hour.

Doctors will freeze the follicles at minus 180C before extracting the dermal papilla cells – stem cells which ‘talk’ to skin cells to create a shaft in the skin from which hair grows. Older people losing their hair have worn-out hair follicles which grow fewer hairs that are also shorter and thinner.

An injection of cells cloned in the laboratory from their younger follicles could supercharge those older follicles to grow thicker, better quality hair.

Hair restoration surgeon Dr Bessam Farjo of biotechnology firm HairClone, said: ‘It stops the clock on ageing and we hope could make hair loss a thing of the past.’

Dr Asim Shahmalak, president of the Trichological Society and a hair transplant surgeon based in London and Manchester, said: ‘After many decades, it is hopeful for men that there is something new available for dealing with hair loss. This would be much less invasive than a hair transplant, although there is not yet evidence that cloning cells from hair follicles will work. It is the goal of researchers to use cells in this way to stimulate hair to grow thicker and maintain density.’

The Manchester firm currently only has authorisation to bank hair follicles and not so far to use them on patients.

Dr Farjo said: ‘There is no one-off fix as hair loss is progressive and a patient will need to have additional treatments every few years in order to rejuvenate newly thinning follicles as the balding process progresses.’