Could this mouse help to beat baldness?
IT may not be the most handsome of creatures.
But this mouse – or more specifically its bristly tuft of hair – could hold the cure for baldness and going grey, scientists claim.
They have worked out how to use stem cells to create pigmented hair follicles that grew successfully when implanted into hairless mice.
They hope to test the technique on men in as little as three years, and the treatment could be in widespread use within a decade.
British experts have commended the Japanese researchers, saying they seem to have cracked a problem that has baffled scientists for decades.
The breakthrough centres on stem cells, ‘blank’ cells with the ability to turn into other cell types, and follicles, the tiny pouches that sprout hairs.
The researchers, from the Tokyo University of Science, took two types of skin stem cells from mice, which together contain all the instructions for a hair follicle.
They grew the cells in a lab until they formed immature follicles. These were then implanted on the backs of hairless mice and, within two to three weeks, they sprouted hairs.
It also worked when the follicle was produced using human stem cells gleaned from the scalp of a balding man, the journal Nature Communications reports.
It means that in future, stem cells could be extracted from a sample of skin taken from a man’s scalp and grown into healthy follicles.
Tens of thousands could then be produced in the lab and injected into a bald patch. The research team also showed that by including a particular type of stem cell, they could produce hair that is coloured rather than white.
It may also be possible to create a treatment for those who have gone grey but are not thin on top.
David Fenton, a consultant dermatologist at St Thomas’ Hospital in London, described the research as ‘very elegant and beautifully done’, but stressed it is not yet clear how natural the hair will look, how long it will last and, indeed, how safe it is.
And it won’t come cheap – the stem cell treatment is expected to cost thousands of pounds.