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McDonald's French Fries Cure for Hair Loss

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There has been a lot of news recently circulating the web about a new way to help you grow your hair back; eating McDonald’s French fries. This theory is based on the findings of Professor, Junji Fukada of Yokohama University in Japan. Fukada and his team of researchers have studied the form of silicone called “dimethylpolysiloxane” that is used in frying oil at McDonalds to reduce frothing.

Fukada and his team of scientists developed a method for large-scale preparation of hair follicle germs (HFGs), the reproductive source of hair follicles that grow and maintain the hair, in vitro (out of the body). They used self-organization of cells by mixing mouse epidermal (skin) cells and mouse/human mesenchymal (pluripotent connective tissue) cells and seeded them in micro-wells (single-cell cultures). Over the 3-day culture period the cells showed typical HFG features; they first formed a randomly distributed single-cell mass and then they separated from each other. These self-sorted Hair Follicle Germs, known as ssHFGs, were capable of generating shaft and hair-follicles when transplanted under the skin in the backs of nude mice. This finding paved way for the preparation of about 5,000 ssHFGs in a micro-well tool made up of oxygen-permeable silicone. This showed that the oxygen supply through the bottom was needed to enable both the formation of ssHFG and hair shaft generation.

These researchers have been successful in mass-preparing thousands of HFGs which concluded that dimethylpolysiloxane can create the vessels where HTGs could grow, but that this alone cannot stimulate hair growth.

An article in Huffington Post debunks the hair loss treatment circulating the web. Huffington Post’s article “Sorry, McDonald’s French Fries Won’t Actually Cure Your Baldness” stated that ingesting McDonald’s fries or any other of their fried foods “will have no effect whatsoever” on your hair growth.

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For four decades, scientists have known about the possibility of using cells derived from the base of hair follicles (dermal papilla cells) to stimulate the growth of new hair. More recently, researchers have been able to harvest dermal papillae, multiply them, and induce the creation of new hair follicles – but only in rats. Now, for the first time, scientists at Columbia University have shown in a new study that they can induce new human hair growth from cloned human papillae. This procedure, called “hair follicle neogenesis,” has the potential to solve one of the primary limitations in today’s surgical hair restoration techniques; namely, the patient’s finite donor hair supply that is available for transplantation.

A significant number of hair loss patients do not have enough donor hair to be candidates for a hair transplant procedure with the percentage of women lacking stable donor hair greater than in men. This technique would enable both men and women with limited donor reserves to benefit from hair transplant procedures and enable current candidates to achieve even better results.

According to co-study leader Angela M. Christiano, Ph.D., of Columbia University in New York, the ground-breaking publication is a “substantial step forward” in hair follicle neogenesis. While the technology still needs further development to be clinically useful, the implications of successfully inducing new hair follicles to grow from cloned hair cells could be a game-changer in the arena of hair restoration. Instead of moving hair follicles from the donor area to the recipient area, as in a hair transplant, follicular neogenesis involves the creation of new follicles, literally adding more follicles to the scalp rather than merely transplanting them from one part of the scalp to another. Regarding the new technique’s possible use as a hair restoration treatment, Dr. Christiano said:

“This method offers the possibility of inducing large numbers of hair follicles or rejuvenating existing hair follicles, starting with cells grown from just a few hundred donor hairs. It could make hair transplantation available to individuals with a limited number of follicles, including those with female-pattern hair loss, scarring alopecia, and hair loss due to burns.”

In hair follicle neogenesis, the physician would harvest a sample of healthy, hair-producing scalp tissue from a patient. The dermal papilla cells in the samples would be isolated and allowed to multiply in a laboratory culture, and then the lab-grown papillae would be injected back into balding areas of the person’s scalp where they would induce skin cells to form into hair follicles that would grow normal adult hairs.

The main hurdle that researchers had to overcome was getting human papillae to aggregate — or clump together — so that it could then develop into a follicle. Cells that are cultured on a flat surface seem to lose their ability to produce hair. Prior studies have shown that rat papillae, unlike human papillae, tend to aggregate spontaneously; a process that makes the next, critical step of forming the hair follicle possible. The research team reasoned that if they could create an extracellular environment in which human cells could aggregate, they could induce the growth of human hair follicles.

The breakthrough came as a result of encouraging human dermal papillae cells to grow in a three-dimensional culture — a spherical mass of cells — rather than in a conventional two-dimensional tissue culture. The 3-D configuration allows the cells to signal one another and direct the formation of a new hair. Normally, a culture is grown in a one-cell layer in a petri dish, however, in order to coax the papillae to aggregate, the researchers used a technique called a “hanging drop culture.” Here, droplets of culture, each containing the requisite number of papilla cells (about 3,000 cells) to form a hair follicle, are placed on the lid of a petri dish. When the lid is flipped upside-down, the force of gravity pulls the papillae into the bottom of the suspended droplet, causing the cells to ‘clump.’ This is similar to what the rat papillae do naturally.

In the study, Christiano and colleagues took dermal papillae from seven donors and cloned the cells in tissue culture. After a few days, the cells were transplanted into human skin that had been grafted onto the backs of mice. In implanting these cultured ‘clumps’ of dermal papillae, the research team induced hair follicle production in five out of seven test samples. Using a technique called gene expression analysis, the researchers were able to determine that the three-dimensional cultures restored 22% of the gene expression found in normal hair follicles, enough to induce the formation of new hairs that genetically matched the human donor’s DNA (rather than the mouse).

While hair cloning and multiplication techniques have been discussed and studied for years, the progress made by Dr. Christiano and her colleagues Colin Jahoda, Ph.D., and Claire Higgins, Ph.D. (the first author on the study), is unprecedented. In identifying the key benefit their procedure might have over current hair restoration practices, Dr. Christiano said:

“Current hair-loss medications tend to slow the loss of hair follicles or potentially stimulate the growth of existing hairs, but they do not create new hair follicles. Neither do conventional hair transplants, which relocate a set number of hairs from the back of the scalp to the front. Our method, in contrast, has the potential to actually grow new follicles using a patient’s own cells.”

In addition to combating male and female pattern genetic hair loss (androgenetic alopecia), the technique has the potential for use as a treatment for patients with severe skin injuries, such as burn victims, or sufferers of chronic conditions like scarring alopecias. In these cases, the absence of hair follicles had limited the usefulness of transplanted skin. With the ability to clone follicles, this problem can potentially be overcome.

Dr. Christiano, a colleague of Dr. Bernstein’s at Columbia University, is a world-renowned hair geneticist and a sufferer of alopecia areata, an autoimmune disease that creates bald spots on the scalp. In investigating the causes of her own balding, Dr. Christiano embarked on a career that led to she and her team identifying multiple genes associated with the disease. Her co-study leader, Dr. Jahoda, is a professor of stem cell sciences at Durham University and co-director of the North East England Stem Cell Institute. The lead author of the study, Dr. Higgins, is an associate research scientist in the dermatology department at Columbia University.

The study called, “Microenvironmental reprogramming by three-dimensional culture enables dermal papilla cells to induce de novo human hair-follicle growth,” and published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The human hair follicles in this study were donated by volunteer hair transplant patients at Bernstein Medical – Center for Hair Restoration in New York City. We are appreciative of our patients who participated in this research.

Reference
Higgins, C.A., Chen, J.C., Cerise, J.E., Jahoda, C.A., Christiano, A.M.: Microenvironmental reprogramming by three-dimensional culture enables dermal papilla cells to induce de novo human hair-follicle growth. PNAS, 2013; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1309970110.

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We have previously discussed Dr. Angela Christiano‘s work on hair loss genetics with her team at Columbia University in New York. A review of the 16th annual meeting of the European Hair Research Society; held recently in Barcelona, Spain; brings to our attention new research being conducted by a very astute scientist, Dr. Claire Higgins, who works at Dr. Christiano’s laboratory.

With tissue supplied by Bernstein Medical, Dr. Higgins is studying the inductive properties of the dermal papilla (DP), a group of cells that forms the structure directly below each hair follicle. As outlined in our Hair Cloning Methods page, the dermal papilla is of great interest to hair restoration physicians. Ideally, research of this kind will lead to a breakthrough in hair cloning or hair multiplication which will allow physicians to effectively “cure” hair loss by developing a limitless supply of donor hair that can be used in hair restoration procedures.

A description of Dr. Higgins’ work is provided by the Hair Transplant Forum International:

“After isolating [dermal papilla] from human hair follicles, they grow the human DP cells in spheroid cultures in order to retain their inductive potential. Then they place the dermal papilla spheres between the epidermis and dermis of neonatal foreskin and graft it onto the back of mice. Human [hair follicle] neogenesis can be observed after 6 weeks.”

In essence, the scientists were able to capitalize on the potential of dermal papilla cells to induce the growth of a hair follicle by enclosing the DP cells in a small sphere. When implanted, the DP cells maintained their properties of inducing the development of follicles, and, indeed, follicles did grow.

It is another example of how far our understanding of the biology of hair has come in the last 10 years. And it is another example of scientists closing in on the elusive “hair loss cure.”

Read up on the latest Hair Cloning Research

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Could it be that Vitamin D is the cure for baldness that scientists have been looking for all these years? New research on Vitamin D, and its receptors in hair follicles, has taken us down a previously untrodden path that could, potentially, lead to new medical treatments for hair loss.

The Vitamin D receptor was previously known to stimulate hair follicles, which were in the dormant phase of hair growth, to grow hair when activated. The research into Vitamin D and its effect on hair and skin, centers around this receptor.

One group of researchers — based in San Francisco, California — has discovered that a molecule, called MED, suppresses the Vitamin D receptor, thereby preventing the follicle from growing a new hair. Their research in mice found that blocking the MED molecule allowed mice to grow more hair. A second research team, from Harvard Medical School, has found a molecule that activates the receptor. However, they have been unable to use the molecule to grow new hair.

A third research group, based in Japan, used Vitamin D to stimulate stem cells to become hair-producing follicles in rats. Dr. Kotaro Yoshimura says of the study, “The results suggest that it may be useful in expanding human [dermal papilla cells (DPCs)] with good quality, and help establish a DPC transplantation therapy for growing hair.” His colleague on the study, Dr. Noriyuki Aoi, said, “We found that treating the dermal papilla cells with [Vitamin D] significantly enhanced the growth of new hair over that of the control group. We also observed a better rate of maturation of the follicles. In other words, the hair grew thicker and lasted longer.”

While the third group appears to be the closest to achieving hair growth from a Vitamin D-based treatment, viable treatments in humans are still many years away. As we have indicated in other posts on the Hair Transplant Blog, there is a great deal of ongoing medical research into the causes and treatment of hair loss. The way the field has progressed over the last 5 years it seems to be just a matter of when, not if, a cure for baldness is available to the public.

Read more about ongoing medical research on the causes of and treatments for hair loss

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