Those of us who are well familiar with all the hardships and negative emotions related to receding hairline and hair loss are in constant search for effective treatments and natural remedies to cure baldness. A great deal of scientists, research groups and expert teams are currently working on creating new effective solutions to assist modern people forget about the problem of losing hair, and from time to time the reports about new findings and new ideas of today’s scientists appear in mass media and scientific editions. Recently, a few interesting solutions were offered, including using hair transplants, special hair extensions or, as an alternative, using Moroccan hair oil as an effective natural hair loss treatment and prevention. These days, it is reported that a new innovative approach was offered by a group of Japanese scientists which is supposed to be effective and possibly can play a role of a new cure for baldness and hair loss.

A group of researches from Keio University in Tokyo started a very daring experiment and attempted to use stem cells in order to engineer artificial hair follicles. The used a special type of stem cells known as induced pluripotent stem (iPS) cells received from mice. Primarily, the cells were cultured in the lab from hair papilla cells received from donor mice. Later on, the cells were transplanted to other group of mice free of immune rejection, in order to see how the cells will develop into hair follicles in the actual body. According to the scientists, it took only about two or three weeks for the most of lab mice to develop healthy hair follicles, which later on gave life to new healthy hair shafts. Thus, lab mice demonstrated successfully developed hair, and the most important thing that the scientists are convinced that the same kind of procedure can be effectively conducted on humans.

“Our hope is to find methods to generate hair and hair follicles more efficiently and to grow hair using human hair papilla cells in the future,” said Manabu Ohyama, a study leader and a specialists of dermatology at Tokyo’s Keio University School of Medicine. Many experts consider the findings of Japanese scientists a real breakthrough in modern science, and more of the studies are scheduled to study the opportunities that stem cell research can offer to those who are looking for ways to cure baldness. It is actually not the first attempt to sue stem cells for engineering human hair follicles, and the technology used by Japanese researches involved the findings of another famous Japanese scientist, Shinya Yamanaka, a famous personality, professor of the Kyoto University and Nobel Prize laureate. The technology proposed by this expert is currently considered one of the most effective for using stem cell to improve our health.

Those are stem cell technologies which help modern doctors receive artificial kidneys, intestines, muscle tissues, eye retina, skin, blood cells, sperm, and other vital tissues which mean a hope for life for a great number of patients. The main problem which accompanies using body tissues received from stem cell technologies is very high risk of cancer. At the same time, a great deal of work is being carried out to create new safe stem cell technologies to help forming healthy body cells or tissues and promote longevity in many patients. Japanese scientists say that it will take time to create a new technology for growing hair follicles and combat the main drawback they are facing now: inability to create the desired amount of hair follicles in a short period of time. It is possible to find more information about the research of Japanese scientists in the latest issue of the Journal of Investigative Dermatology.