Aderans’s “tissue engineering” approach to hair loss

Aderans Research Institute, Inc. (ARI) is one of a handful of companies racing to develop a realistic treatment for hair loss based on the cultivation of hair follicle cells.  At the recent  BIO International Convention held in late May in Atlanta, the company’s spokesmen described Aderans’s quest to perfect state-of-the-art cell-based hair regeneration technologies for men and women.

“Our research is focused on generating a tissue engineering solution to the regeneration of hair,” said Kurt Stenn, MD, Vice President and Chief Scientific Officer at ARI. “We’re using the hair cells from hair follicles and researching methods to promote their growth in controlled laboratory environments. If successful, we’ll then be able to recombine the cells and restore them to the scalp, where they would ultimately elicit hair growth.”


Co-located in Atlanta and Philadelphia, Aderans is actively engaged in the study of state-of-the-art cell-based hair regeneration for men and women. The company recently launched Phase 2 of its clinical study to assess the impact of its regenerative cell treatment on pattern hair loss, also known as androgenetic alopecia. Phase 2 of the study is being conducted in six U.S. cities: Atlanta, Boston, New York, Raleigh, Houston, and Washington DC. Phase 1 was conducted exclusively in the United Kingdom.

“The second phase of this study is another step in our efforts to truly understand the impact of
regenerative cell therapy on pattern hair loss. It’s a tremendous opportunity,” said Stenn. The company’s research is focused on on taking actual hair cells — technically known as fibroblasts and keratinocytes, the two primary cell types within hair follicles—and promoting their growth in controlled laboratory environments. The research teams then recombine them and these “combined hair cells” are then placed in the patient’s skin, where they are expected to elicit hair growth.

To see a brief video of Aderans’s approach, click here.

Some experts believe that this sort of cell treatment, or “tissue engineering,” represents a major advance on traditional hair transplant procedures, promising to overcome a key limitation of conventional transplantation: a finite hair supply for any one person.

Through cell engineering, Aderans Research is attempting to develop technologies that will allow doctors to multiply existing hair cells capable of eliciting hair growth, providing patients with a comprehensive solution to hair loss regardless of the quantity of their existing hair.

Aderans Research Institute is a subsidiary of Aderans Company, Ltd, the world’s largest wig manufacturer, and an affiliate of Bosley, a global leader in medical hair restoration.

Gene linked to hair loss brings baldness cure nearer

Japanese researchers believe they have identified the gene in mice that causes hair loss… bringing a cure for baldness significantly closer.  The researchers, who published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, identified the Sox21 gene as being a kind of “switch” that seemingly turns on hair loss.  The British Daily Telegraph summarized the findings in this way:

The scientists blocked the activity of the gene in mice and found that the rodents started losing hair on their heads about 15 days after birth and became completely naked a week later.

“It is entirely possible that the gene is also a cause of thinning hair among humans”, said Professor Yumiko Saga at the National Institute of Genetics in Tokyo.

Hairs have a long growing phase - two years or more - followed by a short resting phase of two or three months.

But as some men age this pattern gradually reverses until eventually the resting period is so long that there’s no new hair coming through to replace the 100 to 150 hairs we lose daily through natural shedding.

Another British website, UKMedix, reports that the Sox21 gene is also present in human skin and in the human hair shaft cuticle.

Genes are known to play the largest part in the development of male pattern baldness because of the simple fact that some people get it and some people don’t which is not related to any external factors. A hair loss remedy which could ‘switch off’ the hair loss gene in men would be a huge discovery and one which would earn the person and company who discovered it lifelong fame and recognition as well as more money than they could possibly ever spend.

Unlocking the Mechanism of Hair Stem Cell Regeneration and Regrowth

Elaine Fuchs, head of the Laboratory of Mammalian Cell Biology and Development at Rockefeller University, is researching how stem cells in hair follicles are able to regenerate — research that may one day lead to the promised land of stem cell cloning techniques for hair loss.   “Throughout our lifetime, each hair follicle undergoes cyclical bouts of growth, destruction and rest through an intrinsic stem cell population,” Dr. Fuchs told Science Daily recently. “It provides an excellent opportunity to investigate the molecular process of tissue regeneration and stem cell self-renewal.”

For a new round of hair growth to begin, stem cells in the hair follicle must receive a signal to divide. In response to this signal, the hair follicle regenerates first by growing downward through the skin’s middle layer, the dermis, and then producing the specialized cells that form the hair. After a period during which the hair grows longer, stem cells stop dividing, and the hair follicle gradually retracts again. There is then a period of rest and the cycle repeats.

Fuchs and her team have for several years been exploring the infrequently dividing stem cells located near the base of the hair follicle in a compartment known as the bulge. This time they focused on a much smaller cluster of often-ignored cells called the hair germ, located at the very bottom of this structure. Although little is known about the hair germ, scientists postulate that it emerges from the bulge at the end of the destructive phase of the hair cycle.

In their work, to be highlighted in the February 6 issue of Cell Stem Cell, Fuchs and her team scrutinized the hair cycle through the resting phase and discovered that during most of this time, both the bulge and the hair germ remain dormant. By isolating cells from both the hair germ and the bulge, they also confirmed that the two are molecularly very similar, suggesting that the germ does indeed originate from the bulge. The researchers believe, however, that toward the end of the resting phase, the hair germ gets activated to proliferate before the bulge. Moreover, the team showed that the activating signal comes from a structure known as the dermal papilla.

New Video About Hair Cloning or Hair Tissue Engineering for Hair Loss