Researcher Kevin McElwee -- one of only a few people in the world who hold a doctoral degree in hair biology -- thinks a cure for baldness that uses the technique of hair cloning could be commercially available within 10 years.
Hair cloning is a slang term for engineered hair growth. The process involves isolating a group of cells at the base of the hair follicle -- the living part of hair rooted in the skin. Once the follicular cells are multiplied in a laboratory, they can then be implanted back into the donor’s scalp where they divide to create new follicles and generate new hair.
A sample of about 10 hairs could produce several million cultured cells, which, in turn, could grow several thousand hairs.
Scientists have been studying hair cloning in animal models for a few years, but McElwee is the first investigator to demonstrate exactly how cloning works.
“Now that we have proof of how this process works, we can accelerate the research toward creating a limitless supply of hair -- in effect, a cure for baldness,” says the 34-year-old.
While early results are promising, he estimates it will take almost a decade of further study, clinical trials and meeting regulatory requirements before cloning is widely available.
Common or pattern balding affects about 20 per cent of men in their 20s. By age 50, about half the male population and 20 per cent of women have problems with baldness or hair thinning.
An expert in the cellular mechanics of hair loss and growth, McElwee was recruited by Dr. Jerry Shapiro, a world authority on hair disorders, to join the division of dermatology in UBC’s department of medicine in March 2004. Also an investigator with the Vancouver Coastal Health Research Institute, McElwee came to Canada from Philipp University in Germany where he was a senior scientist in the department of dermatology.
A biologist and immunologist, McElwee completed his unique PhD in the immunological mechanisms involved in alopecia areata, an inflammatory hair loss disease that can affect men, women and children and cause full body hair loss. The cause of the disease is not fully understood but it is believed that an individual’s own immune system prevents hair follicles from producing hair fibre.
This month, McElwee will travel to the International Meeting of Hair Research Societies in Berlin to present his findings on the cells believed to be the primary culprits in causing the disease.
By separating cells in lymph nodes, McElwee has determined which cells are capable of inducing the disease. He found two types of cells caused balding problems: CD8, which produce patchy baldness and CD4, which produce systemic balding.