The Future Of Hair

Ananova reports on a new find with respect to the genetics of hair.

Since Ananova has the nasty habit of removing articles from links, I'll just copypaste the whole story here:

A pill to make your hair curl?

Scientists say they have identified the difference between straight and curly hair.

They believe it could lead to drugs that can make straight hair curly and vice versa, reports the Daily Telegraph.

Scientists also believe the discovery could lead to the death of hair dyes, as drugs could be used to restore colour in the prematurely grey.

In Clichy, Paris, a team from L'Oreal grew hair in the laboratory to get to the root of what makes hair curly or straight.

They found that the hair bulb, around four millimetres deep in the scalp, is hook-shaped in people with curly hair and straight in the case of European and Asian hair.

When it emerges from the scalp, the hair shaft retains the shape of the follicle.

"A curly follicle makes curly hair," said Bruno Bernard, head of hair biology at L'Oreal. "This is a breakthrough. For a very long time people did not understand how hair got curly."

Although the team has yet to find a "master switch" that controls follicle shape, Mr Bernard said it was now possible to think about how to change hair shape by using hormones or drugs.

"It is now possible to use biological methods to make curly hair straight and vice versa," he said.

This is not the only thing happening in the area of hairloss right now. Researchers worldwide are working hard to cure baldness by coming up with hair multiplication techniques:

• Aderans Research
• Intercytex
• Gho Clinic
• Elaine Fuchs
  

And that's just four out of many players trying to find a cure for baldness. The hair multiplication techniques that these people are creating would obsolete old fashioned hair transplants, where a strip of hair is cut out of the back of the head.

The main drawbacks of hair transplants are the invasiveness of the prodedure and the limited amount of hair available from the back of the head. Also, only small amounts of hair can be transplanted at one time with hair transplants. It is labor intensive and therefore expensive.

Newer methods could allow for lots of hair follicles to be created/stimulated at one time, with one simple injection of a cell culture. Hair restoration could possibly become cheaper, and affordable for the masses in due time.

The future of hair sure looks good. ;)