Men's Health – Stem Cells & Baldness
The most important thing to men to lose, besides the use of their penis, is their hair. Men do one of two things when they start to go bald, they wither hang on to every last thread and make a not so stylish "hair not" out of it, or they simply shave their heads. It is not unusual for men to be vain, and this is evident with all of the spray on fake hair, toupee's, and hair creams to promote regrowth. The good news is that researchers from Yale University have just identified stem cells within the skin's fatty layer which showed that molecular signals from these cells which were necessary in mice in order to spur hair growth. This latest research has been published in the September 2nd issue of the "Journal Cell".
The senior author of the paper, Valerie Horsley, said that they believe that if they can get those fat cells in the epidermis to communicate with the dormant stem cells at the end of hair follicles, they might be able to get hair to grow again. Men that have male pattern baldness still have stem cells in the root follicle's, but these stem cells somehow lose the ability to restart their hair regeneration. Scientists have known that these follicle stem cells need signals from within the skin to grow hair, but the source of those signals has been unclear.
Dr. Horsley's research team had observed that when hair dies off, the layer of fat in the scalp that held all of the hair loses most of the skin's thickness and it shrinks. When hair growth begins, the fat layer expands in a process called adipogenesis. Researchers found that a type of stem cell involved in the creation of new fat cells, the adipose precursor cells, was a required component for the hair regeneration process in lab mice. They also found that these cells produce molecules called platelet derived growth factors, or PDGF, which are also a necessary component in order to produce hair growth. Dr. Horsley's laboratory is also trying to find other types of cell signals produced by adipose precursor stem cells that will hopefully help play a role in regulating the growth of hair. She also wants to know whether these same signals are required for human hair growth.
Hopefully with this new discovery of stem and fat cells, researchers will soon be able to stimulate the body to grow hair. This break through will not only be beneficial to vain men, but it will help with patients that lost their hair from cancer therapies.
