Follicular neogenesis, the new frontier of hair loss treatments
Follicular neogenesis, also called hair cloning, is a hair loss treatment which facilitates the growth of healthy new hair in the scalp skin of a living organism.
A professionist injects follicles progenitor cells in the area between the surface of the skin and its lower strata, inducing these cells to produce new hair follicles, and as a consequence new hair in areas which were previously completely bald.
Unfortunately, this method at the moment work only with rodents and it is not ready for human trials.
Much more work and trials need to be done before new fully-functioning human hair follicles can be produced at will on a human scalp, so that we get, in this way, a full head of hair, of the same type of a hair transplant.
Research on humans is not so easy as with rats: it requires that lab trials meet rigorous federal standards that regulate their execution and it has been noted that these kind of processes take a long time to be approved.
Even when found to be working, such a treatment would still require meeting severe safety requirements from FDA before releasing it to the general public.
Ken Washenik, M.D., Ph.D., a professor of dermatology at New York University’s states that his approach to follicular neogenesis doesn’t rely exclusively on the cells constituting the dermal papillae, but also from another type of cell coming from the follicle.
According to his own words, he believes that he can re-create a specific environment in the lab where the cells will not forget how to create new hair.
He’s been able to grow hair on the back of a mouse, but those cells that were injected on the animal came from another rodent.
When they used human cells, they didn’t get any regrowth, or follicular neogenesis.
Hopefully they will have better luck in other clinical trials, transporting human cells into human people.
Other researchers are cultivating in vitro vellus hairs, and even smaller hair, called “proto-hairs”, which are follicular entities that they can put on the scalp with the same method used for transplants.
The biggest challenge they are facing is getting these early cells to multiply in a sufficient quantity so that a real regrowth can be seen.
Clinical trials continue, still without consistent results on humans, nevertheless Dr. Washenik stays confident that follicular cloning will soon become a reality.
In the meanwhile, if your hair thinning is severe, don’t forget to check our natural anti baldness program.
