Name: We’re Using Stem Cells to Reverse Baldness and It’s Actually Working
Uploaded: 2021-05-09T08:25:34.000Z
Duration: 3 min 28 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Some very hairy mice are bringing us another step closer to un-LOCKing a way to regenerate

About 50% of men and 25% of women experience at least partial hair loss by the age of 50,

whether due to age, medical treatments, or disease.

Current options for those looking to reverse this loss include things like medications

that may slow hair loss and transplants from hair follicles elsewhere on the body.

But neither have the often desired effect of restoring a thick and full volume of hair.

Researchers have been optimizing techniques for culturing “hair follicle germs” in

There are 2 key types of cells that help hair follicles develop before we're born -- epithelial

cells that help us create skin, and mesenchymal cells that help us create a variety of connective

tissues -- so researchers copied this strategy from the embryo into the lab and they got

Though, these techniques were never high yield enough to produce the amount of follicles

needed to restore a full head of hair -- to its previous luxurious glory -- until now…

Recently, Japanese researchers made improvements to this protocol, and then designed a special,

oxygen-permeable mini-chip to scale up the farming of follicles, growing up to ~5000

The “chip” isn't like a computer chip -- it's a tiny polymer structure with little

They grow the follicles, add a collagen and mesh layer for easy handling, and transplant

right to the head where hopefully, it takes hold and grows like normal hair.

They showed that transplanting these follicles onto immunodeficient mice led to lots of new

They could easily transfer cells from their chip to a collagen matrix for uniform transplant

with follicles nice and evenly spaced out, which would make for practical harvesting

when it comes time to transplant cells grown with these chips onto humans.

While these engineers made big progress in the scale-up and efficiency of growing hair

follicles on a chip, their tests WERE all done with immune-deficient mice.

But it's not always a great idea to suppress a human's immune system.

So, each patient would need their own personal source of hair follicles…

Fortunately, hair follicles contain stem cells capable of regenerating new hairs, among other

Meaning that perhaps in the future instead of transplanting follicles from another part

of the body, scientists can take a few follicles from a patient, expand them in culture, then

transplant way more back onto your bald spot!

So, for those waiting eagerly for solutions, they're coming!

Keep putting sunscreen on the back of your head.

We have the machinery, scientists just need a little more time to figure out the cells

Sam is going to be on the channel more often from now on, she's amazing she studies neurobiology and I predict

-- like hair -- she's going to grow on you!

I'm super excited, I will need to up my pun game for sure.

I'm @Science.Sam and I talk about my work in Neuroscience and other science

Thanks for watching! Did you know that we shared our DNA with neanderthals?

And they shared it with us too, if you know what we mean. Watch this video to learn more?

Did you know theres a special word for something that produces hair?

It's called trichogenic, and insects and other arthropods have these cells too.

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We’re Using Stem Cells to Reverse Baldness and It’s Actually Working

vulnerable

immune

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strategy