Angela M. Christiano, Ph.D., and her team conducted an experiment on mouse and human skin, and targeted the family of enzymes known as Janus kinase (JAK).
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For instance, it appears that the new drugs might prove beneficial in combating male pattern baldness, which affects around half of the male population older than 50.
Typically, cancer drugs will provoke hair loss.
The researchers published their findings in the journal Science Advances.
The scientist added further the JAK compound in the drugs put hair into a resting state and this promotes the resting state of hair follicle too. By removing this enzyme, the follicle is free to behave as it did in the past.
However, the treatment has not yet been tested on humans and more research is required before it can be experimented on humans. Nonetheless, the researchers report that their finding applies exclusively to the skin application of the JAK inhibitors. They’re part of a class drugs known as JAK inhibitors. One of the drugs, ruxolitinib (Jakafi), has been approved for certain types of cancer, while the other, tofacitinib (Xeljanz) for rheumatoid arhritis. The aim is to determine if this topical product might be effective in assisting patients suffering from alopecia areata, a condition in which the immune system wrongly attacks hair follicles.
Researchers have identified new drugs that might work as creams to stimulate hair growth, a significant discovery that could lead to a breakthrough in treatment of baldness.
Researcher Angela Christiano and her colleagues from Columbia University have found that JAK inhibitors can treat an uncommon disease that results in hair loss called alopecia areata. Although, by taking the drug orally, it has the same effect, but it works faster if applied on skin, when considering its effects in hair growth. They may “help initiate hair regrowth by having a direct effect on activating hair follicle stem cells”, Christiano said.
When they looked closer, the researchers realised the inhibitors awakened resting follicles out of dormancy. The drugs, it turned out, had kick-started their hair cycles, putting follicles into an active growth phase. Yet, it’s not something that can be administered cosmetically; inhibitors suppress the immune system and leave patients vulnerable to infections, Christiano said. “Some tropical agents induce tufts of hair here and there after a few weeks, but very few compounds have this potent an effect so quickly”.
However, the treatment has not yet been tested on humans, and results that seem promising in lab animals don’t always turn out to work in people.
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Now a new study is offering hope of a possible cure for baldness one day.
