These mice may look like they’re modeling the Newcastle United 13/14 home shirt, but the truth is actually even more exciting, if a touch less adorable. Researchers from Columbia University Medical Centre have found that an enzyme-inhibiting drug can, in some cases, restore hair growth in mice with alopecia areata.
As the video below explains, the drug – which has already been cleared by the US Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis and blood diseases – inhibits the activity of Janus Kinase (JAK) enzymes, which are found in hair follicles. By limiting JAK activity, the mice started to grow their hair back in just ten days, and while the drug could be fed to the mice, rubbing it directly onto their skin showed even more lustrous growth.
Video of Blocking Enzymes in Hair Follicles Promotes Hair Growth
After three weeks, the mice were back to their old, furry selves, and while this doesn’t necessarily mean it’ll be the baldness cure that humans are constantly seeking, it could be a strong start. And potentially not just for male and female pattern baldness, but for hair loss due to chemotherapy.
“What we’ve found is promising, though we haven’t yet shown it’s a cure for pattern baldness,” explained Columbia researcher Angela Christiano. “More work needs to be done to test if JAK inhibitors can induce hair growth in humans using formulations specially made for the scalp. There aren’t many compounds that can push hair follicles into their growth cycle so quickly.”
As Bill Gates once observed, this kind of thing is likely to get plenty of attention because of the skewed marketplace. “The malaria vaccine in humanist terms is the biggest need, but it gets virtually no funding. If you are working on male baldness or other things you get an order of magnitude more research funding because of the voice in the marketplace than something like malaria,” he complained back in 2013.
On the bright side, if baldness is fixed once and for all, then maybe the funding can be redistributed to more worthy causes, thanks to our once-again-furry rodent friends. Accentuate the positive and all that.
Experiments on rodents are full of surprises. Here’s how rats kicked cocaine and alcohol addiction with over-the-counter blood-pressure medication