Are you
suffering from hair loss because of old age, or other genetic circumstances? You
may soon have a solution to your problem, with the help of research work being
done at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania.
Researchers here have been working hard to determine a method to convert adult
cells from the body into epithelial stem cells, which would aid in the
generation of hair follicles.
Arrows
showing hair shafts formed from epithelial stem cells.
By using
human skin cells called dermal fibroblasts, and adding three genes, the
scientists successfully converted those cells into induced pluripotent stem
cells (iPSCs). These researchers have been observing mice with the stem cells
implanted into them. They have observed that the mice did, in fact, regenerate
skin and hair follicles similar to human hair follicles. However, there are two
types of cells, epithelial and dermal papillae cells that are lost when hair is
lost. This research pushes forward the production of epithelial cells, but no
one has determined how to produce new dermal papillae cells yet.
No comments:
Post a Comment