Hair grows quickly and is continually replenished which makes it an attractive source to harvest the amount of stem cells needed for treatments, but this, along with controversy surrounding the ethics of harvesting cells from embryos, has been a major stumbling block of stem cell research.
Stem cells are immature cells that have the ability to become any kind of tissue in the body. Hair grows from follicles and new follicle cells are born from stem cells that exist in a small bulge on the side of the hair follicle. Studies have shown that nerve cells can be grown from hair follicle stem cells, (<<>>).
Now researchers from the <<>> who have already suggested that these stem cells might be a way of treating baldness, and Dr Yasuyuki Amoh and colleagues from the <<>>, have shown that the same stem cells could potentially be used to treat neurological conditions.