What is the status of culturing hair cells to produce an unlimited amount of donor hair?

In the early 1980′s, scientists found that they could remove cells from the base of a growing hair and culture that cell to produce millions of cells from it. This work has been done on mice and rats whose hair follicles are not that much different than humans. This process has been improperly called “cloning of hair” and should be called “cell therapy”. At several study sites around the world, including Toronto, Canada at the University of Toronto, researchers have been able to identify and grow dermal papilla cells (DPC).

For the animal studies athymic mice whose compromised immune systems are less likely to reject foreign material are being employed. Once these researchers can demonstrate that these cells can produce hairs successfully in such mice, and then in humans, the ultimate challenge is to devise an optimal method for introducing the DPC into the human donor. The end goal of course is that instead of depending on a time consuming method of donor hair harvesting and limited supplies of donor hair that we have now, we will be able to have an easily accessed unlimited supply of donor hair. Dr. Unger explains that finding the right cell and the right “food” for that cell took over a year. Similar studies are being conducted in Japan and The Netherlands. Once the cells are reintroduced into the human scalp there is the concern of growing the hair in the right direction and at the right angle.

Currently, cells can be removed from a human patients hair, multiplied to millions of similar cells and injected into immune compromised mice , that will successfully grow hair. The next step is to gain ethics approval for testing in humans, once the technique has been perfected.

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