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New treatment to baldness
08/Oct/2006: A British biotechnological firm, Intercytex, is in the process of developing an effective treatment to baldness, using a robot, which could grow hair follicle cells.
Baldness, usually triggered by a hormone called ‘dihydrotestosterone’ in men, results in shrinking of follicle and thinning of hair. It has many psychological implications in men, including loss of self-confidence. The new treatment involves removal of hair follicle (a part of the skin that grows hair by packing old cells together) from the back of the neck, culturing them and then re-implanting the cells.
The treatment was initially tested on seven men with pattern baldness (the most common form of baldness in men involving progressive hair thinning), of which five grew hair after the treatment. The treatment will now be tested on 20 more men. Currently no effective treatments are available for baldness.
Nick Higgins, the chief executive of Intercytex, said that in male pattern baldness, the area at the back of the neck is usually unaffected by the hormone dihydrotestosterone. In this treatment, a small sample of the dermal papilla cells is taken from the back of the neck and cultured in a special medium until the cells multiply 10,000 fold. Then the cells are injected under the skin, using a fine needle, resulting in the growth of new hair at each point of injection.
Higgins added that the cell culture growth phase takes about three weeks and it involves a lot of steps, but the robot, which has been developed by the company, can do all these steps and can take 200 samples at once.
Higgins said that this new treatment would also be tested on women with female pattern alopecia (a form of hair loss in women). However, he added that it would be about three years before the treatment is made available to the general public. If the clinical trails of this treatment are successful, then baldness may no longer be a problem, in future.
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