Researchers found a way to repel hair on injured skin

According to the NYU School of Medicine, USA, there is a way to regrow hair on damaged or injured skin.

By pushing locks of hair back onto damaged skin, the results shed light on why hair does not grow normally on injured skin and has the potential to look for better drugs to regrow hair and restore growth.

Can we really push hair back?

Posted in Nature CommunicationsThe study examined the effect of distinct signaling pathways on the damaged skin of laboratory mice. Fibroblasts, cells that secrete collagen, are the structural proteins most responsible for maintaining the shape and strength of skin and hair.

As part of their investigation, the researchers activated the sonic Hedgehog signaling pathway used by the cells to communicate with each other. This pathway is known to be very active during the early stages of human growth in the uterus when hair follicles form, but is also blocked in injured skin in healthy adults. Researchers say this most likely explains why hair follicles fail to develop into replaced skin after injury or surgery.

Mayumi Ito, Ph.D., principal investigator and cell biologist, associate professor in the Department of Dermatology Ronald O. Perelman of NYU Langone Health, USA, explains, "Our results show that stimulating fibroblasts through the sonic hedgehog can trigger hair growth seen in scarring ".

Repelling hair on damaged skin is a medical need that has not been met yet.

The goal of the researchers is to signal mature skin to return to their embryonic state to allow the growth of new hair follicles, not only on injured skin, but also on people with baldness due to aging.

Ito adds, "We now know that it is a signaling problem in very active cells as we develop in the uterus, but less in mature skin cells with age."

Among the main findings of the study, it was found that no evidence of hair growth was observed on untreated skin, but on treated skin, which proves that sonic signaling by a hedgehog was the origin of hair growth.

To avoid the risk of tumors reported in other experiments on the way of the sonic hedgehog, the research team activated only the fibroblasts located just beneath the surface of the skin, where they appear. first roots of the hair follicle (dermal papillae).

Ito and his team plan to study in more detail how chemical and genetic stimulants of fibroblasts could activate the sonic hedgehog pathway in injured human skin. The ultimate goal is to establish likely therapeutic targets for hair regrowth.