A cure for baldness may have been found with skin moles providing the key to getting back the thick hair you had as a teenager, according to a new study.
While moles sprouting hair may not look attractive, they are the basis for a possible treatment for hair loss with clinical trials starting this summer.
Scientists are excited by the discovery and believe it could lead to a whole new road map using molecular therapies for baldness due to old age.
A team at the University of California said that the key is a molecule called osteopontin which is found in hairy moles.
The human body is covered with hair follicles and most are so small they cannot be seen with the naked eye.
But the protein osteopontin which is present in moles activates dormant hair follicles causing “robust growth”.
Scientists have been trying to get osteopontin to get stem cells to produce hair on people’s heads.
“We found that senescent pigment cells produce large quantities of a specific signaling molecule called osteopontin, which causes normally dormant and diminutive hair follicles to activate their stem cells for robust growth of long and thick hairs,” said lead corresponding author Maksim Plikus, UCI professor of developmental and cell biology.
“Senescent cells are typically viewed as detrimental to regeneration and are thought to drive the aging process as they accumulate in tissues throughout the body, but our research clearly shows that cellular senescence has a positive side to it.”
The treatment would involve needling the osteopontin into the scalp in a procedure like Botox.
So far it has been found to work with mice and the next stage is to try it out on people, with Dr Pikus saying he is “excited” at the possibility of it working.
Osteopontin has been known for a long time for its role in mending wounds and remodelling tissue but this is the first time its potential in stopping baldness has been found.
Dr Pikus also said that there is no danger of a person’s head starting to look like a massive mole as osteopontin doesn’t work on its own to create the necessary skin pigment.
And that a person’s hair would grow back as it did originally as the properties are encoded with the follicle.
"It will grow like you remember it when you were 18, it would not grow like thickened, wiry armpit hair," he said, reported Insider.
"This burst of molecules is shown to hair follicles on a scalp, and they're like, 'Oh, OK. Time to grow!'"
