To elucidate the mechanism of thinning, the stem cells are key

ByNeonbubble

Beginning from the temple, the hairline gradually retreatsMale pattern baldness. Despite the phenomenon that many people are attracted to high interest, what is happening at the cell level when becoming thinner has not been elucidated yet.

University of Pennsylvania Medical SchoolAccording to the study of the scalp, even in the portion of the scalp where the hair has become thinner even in the portion where the hair is rich, hair that is producing in the skin "Hair follicleThe number does not change, it becomes the keep layer of hair making in the hair follicleStem cellsIt seems that the number does not change either. What is different between the stem cell of the slippery part and the stem cell of the bushy part?

Details are as below.Penn Medicine News: Male Pattern Balding May Be Due to Stem Cell Inactivation, According to Penn Study

Some people may have experienced sighing, looking at the mirror and saying, "Hair has been decreasing recently", but it seems that the direction of "shrinking" is closer to fact than "hair decreased" . The thinned part does not have hair, it is hidden under the skin so thin and short that it can not be seen without a microscope.

"It is frightening because stem cells are depleted? I was amazed at the fact that the number of stem cells does not change in thinned areas or in other areas," said Dr. George Cotsarelis of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School I will talk.

Dr. Cotsarelis and colleagues discovered that the scalp of men undergoing flocking surgery is used as a sample and that the number of hair follicles and the number of stem cells remain unchanged for the thinned portion of the scalp of the same male and the portion of hair remaining . On the other hand, it seems that the number of precursor cells differentiated by stem cells was obviously small in the thinned scalp.

The hair follicle supports the hair in the skin, and it is the part which is producing hair.


Cross section of hair follicle. Progenitor cells are marked in green.


The hair follicle stem cell first differentiates into a progenitor cell and the precursor cell further differentiates to become hair, but this time the finding is that the cause of thinning is not the reduction of stem cells but " It will not differentiate ". It is not yet clear why it will not differentiate, but as it turned out that inactivated stem cells also remained on the thinned scalp, we developed a method to re-activate these stem cells and to produce hair The expectation will increase.

The discovery of this time that hair follicles are shrinking, not diminishing, even if they do not look, there may be hairs for many people suffering thinning hair. Dr. Cotsarelis and others are planning to investigate the number of scalp stem cells and progenitor cells not only in male pattern baldness but also in various types of alopecia, leading to the development of a cell-based alopecia treatment method.