A black splash on fair skin and without even a hair. For now, it’s a mouse photo, but it could become a man’s. Or rather, the head of a bald man, from which suddenly a tuft of hair appears. Miracle or illusion, the umpteenth? It is not the first time that experiments of this kind, on the ability to regenerate the cells from which the hair bulb and its appendages originate, hold the test.
Jada Pinkett’s alopecia, what is Will Smith’s wife’s disease
by Irma D’Aria
28 March 2022
This time it was Antonio Regalado to publish on the Mit Technology Review website. He explains, in the piece, how some start-ups, taking advantage of the latest acquisitions of genetic engineering aimed at creating new cells capable of regrowing hair, are trying to put them into practice in their laboratories. Among the companies involved is dNovo which, through the photo of a guinea pig on whose abdomen in the foreground there is a thick lock of human hair, testifies to the success of a stem cell transplant.
Basically, Ernesto Lujanthe Stanford University biologist who founded the company, argues that the components of hair follicles can be produced by genetically reprogramming ordinary cells, such as blood cells.
Regalado summarizes the starting human condition, premising that we are born with all the hair follicles, but that we are then exposed to different contingencies that will characterize their destiny. And here comes aging, cancer, testosterone, adverse genetics, even Covid-19, in short, all those factors capable of killing the stem cells from which they generate hair. When they disappear we will have to say goodbye to the hair too: “Lujan says his company can convert any cell into a hair stem, changing the patterns of active genes from within. He also adds that it is possible to push cells from one state to another. other”.
Pandemic stress, and hair falls out (especially for women)
by Claudia Carucci
11 December 2021
But getting laboratory-grown cells back into the body is difficult. Cell reprogramming experiments as a therapeutic treatment method, few but there have been. For example, in Japan where researchers have transplanted retinal cells into blind people.
After Covid, one in three people lose hair
13 Maggio 2022
But the dNovo is not only dedicated to the foliage to be resurrected; there is also Stemson, thanks to a loan of 22.5 million dollars obtained in part from the pharmaceutical company AbbVie. Both Hamilton, Stemson’s CEO, and Lujan think there is a substantial market. On the other hand, that about half of men fall towards male pattern baldness over the years, some as early as 20, is a bitter reality.