- Researchers say molecules found in mole hair may be a key to developing a new Botox-like treatment for baldness.
- They say the new treatment, if it proves successful, could be a major advancement in the field.
- Experts agree but note that the treatment has only been used in mouse models and may not be effective on human hair.
Researchers say the type of hair that could cure baldness comes from the unlikeliest of places.
Remember that oddly determined single hair growing wildly from that random mole on your body?
That’s the one.
A team of researchers says there’s a type of molecule that causes skin moles to overproduce hair. That, they say, offers a possible treatment for age-related hair loss.
All that’s required is to reshuffle the molecules a bit.
“It is a huge deal. This is an issue that impacts millions of men and women, and there are currently only treatments – no solutions,” Maksim Plikus, a lead study author and a professor of developmental and cell biology at the University of California Irvine, told Medical News Today.
“What we’ve discovered can potentially have a disruptive effect,” he added. “At present, the field is ripe for innovation, for a new compound that acts on hair follicle stem cells, re-awakening them for new hair growth.”
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The team also found that, like in a previous mouse model, samples of human hairy skin moles increased levels of osteopontin when compared to adjacent normal skin.
The researchers’ theory states osteopontin could be injected into a balding person’s scalp to reactivate dormant hair follicles in a Botox-like procedure.
“Researchers drew inspiration from mother nature’s own experiment – millions of people have small and large moles that grow long hair,” Plikus said. “Molecules that are…
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