Cure for Baldness: Synthetic sandalwood unexpectedly triggers hair growth

SSandalwood, best known for its role as a sock drawer potpourri, has had unexpected effects on hair regrowth in a recently published study. Nature Communications. However, although the application of this study has to do with hair regrowth on the head, science has more to do with the sensors typically associated with your nose.

The study, sponsored in part by Giuliani Pharma SpA, an Italian pharmaceutical company that markets synthetic sandalwood treatments, has shown that the cells surrounding the root of each hair can "feel" the synthetic sandalwood. and, more importantly, reply to smell.

"It's actually a rather amazing discovery," says Manchester University skin professor and study author Ralf Paus, Ph.D. reverse in an email. "It's the first time that it has been shown that the remodeling of a normal human mini-organ (hair) can be regulated by a simple and cosmetically widely used odorant." And it's a strictly dependent way of the receiver. "

The hair follicles, the small group of cells that surround the root of each hair, contain a molecule sensor called OR2AT4, which is found throughout the body but is best known for its role in the nose. Usually it is stimulated by the odor molecules of the nose and triggers a chain reaction that drives the perception of smell. But it turns out that OR2AT4 receivers are still excited by the smell even when they are on the head.

Paus explains that this happens because Sandalore (the smell of synthetic sandalwood) can influence the three-part life cycle of the hair. In the first phase, a hair starts to grow deep in the hair follicle. During this phase, many cells in this follicle become cells that form the hair shaft, which can develop for a few months.

In the second phase, the follicular cells slowly cease to turn into hair cells and begin to die. Exhausted by all this activity, the follicle then literally ejects the hair shaft of your head, then enters a period of rest during which it prepares to start the whole cycle again.

In this study, Paus discovered that the exposure of hair follicles (and their OR2AT4 receptors) to synthetic sandalwood extended the growth phase of the hair cycle by mediating a key molecule that advances the hair cycle: a protein called IGF-1 (growth factor similar to insulin 1). He estimates that the OR2AT4 exposure to Sandalore creates more IGF-1, which has the effect of preventing the cells from dying in phase two, keeping them theoretically in phase one. .

It is important to know that Sandalore is a synthetic product of sandalwood, not natural sandalwood. This is a case in which the synthetic product is better than the original; Paus says that real sandalwood would not stimulate hair growth "because it does not bind to OR2AT4". Instead, it is the synthetic components of the Sandalore product that stimulate this effect. Fortunately, sandalwood-based synthetic odorants are increasingly present in consumer products: