Searching and Researching for the Ultimate Baldness Remedy

Scientists at the Berlin Technical University revealed they had grown the world’s first artificial hair follicles from stem cells.

The leader of the research team claimed that within five years, millions of hair loss sufferers could grow new hair from their own stem cells and have it implanted into their bald spots.

A study by the University of Pennsylvania suggested that bald men were not bald at all — it was simply that their stem cells were producing growths too fine to be visible to the human eye. According to the team leader, Dr. George Cotsarelis, ‘The fact that there are normal numbers of stem cells in a bald scalp gives us hope for reactivating those stem cells’.

Researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that a chemical called astressin-B showed ‘astounding’ results for hair regrowth after one jab per day for just five days. The tests were on mice, but the researchers were confident that a cure for baldness could be found in 5 to 10 years.

A British company announced that their scientists had pioneered a brand new technology to combat hair loss. The new technology had ‘been designed to improve hair growth and even re-awaken dormant hair follicles’. The company claimed to have developed a new ‘growth factor complex’ (sh-VEGF) which would stimulate hair follicle growth on balding scalps.

Taken together, this seemed to herald a revolution. Over the years, there has been no shortage of unrealistic headlines promising an end to baldness — but most of this new research seemed to emanate from respectable academic institutions, and all of them seemed to be promising the same thing: the end of baldness.

Even if the research proved to be disappointing in the long run, there appeared to be other developments in the world of hair repair taking place, too — not in biochemistry, but in the technology of hair weaving and transplants.

There were rumours that a new hair transplant technique — FUE, or Follicular Unit Extraction, which transplants follicles from the back of the head one by one instead of in a long strip — used robot technology to enable thousands of follicles to be replanted at once, thus producing a more sophisticated and convincing result. Perhaps a new crop of hair could be bought, right now, without having to wait for genetic science to take the necessary leap forward.

Why does baldness matter so much to men? Stories of men — and women — becoming suicidal after hair loss are not uncommon. This is not just about looks, but mortality, the passage of time.

It is a paradigm of ageing, a signal of loss of control over our bodies on a continuum with, say, losing the ability to stand up or the loss of a faculty. We suddenly become describable as just an old biddy or an old fool. Baldness quickly swallows up a person, like ‘just’ a fat person or an ill person.

Therefore, it is no wonder that experiments, research, and clinic trials have become a constant in the hair restoration industry.