British researcher and his wife grow hair from seed
In November 1999 it was reported in the scientific journal Nature, that Scottish scientist Dr. Colin Jahoda has achieved the world’s first successful human hair transplant by taking dermal sheath cells dissected from his own scalp follicles and creating new hair-growing follicles in the skin of an immunologically incompatible person. In earlier endeavors, scientists have used a cell-transplant technique to stimulate hair growth in laboratory animals, but the latest experiment was the first to be performed on humans.
With help from Dr. Angela Christiano, a Columbia University geneticist, growth cells from the base of the outer root sheath of four scalp hair plugs were isolated by a new technique called laser-capture micro-dissection. The extracted growth cells were then inserted into three tiny incisions made at the new, relatively hair-free site on the forearm of Dr. Jahoda’s wife. The transplant area was free of the coarse hairs typically found on the head.
To protect any new growth that might appear Dr. Jahoda covered each “planting” with a small, protective tent of clear plastic. And in four weeks, new follicles were sprouting big black “seedlings” – with all the characteristics of scalp hair – in all three sites. One site produced two hairs and the other two sites produced one hair each, and DNA analysis showed they each carried the male sex chromosomes.
To what length hair of this kind grow, and for how long, are questions that remain unanswered. Dr. Jahoda played down the possibility that dermal-sheath cell transplants could help bald people because the experiments did not continue long enough to see if the new hairs had the same alternating cycle of growth and dormancy that characterizes normal hair growth. Also on the negative side, critics say the danger with the new technique is that donors could pass on deadly viruses such as hepatitis or HIV to recipients.
But the latest findings may offer new hope for the many people who suffer hair loss due to disease, accident or balding. Dr. Nowell Solish, co-director of dermatologic surgery at the University of Toronto, sees exciting possibilities for bald patients. “This is the whole thing that we’ve been hoping would happen one day,” he said.
Dr. Christiano is even more enthusiastic. “Dr. Jahoda has shown the world how to grow dermal-sheath cells in a lab, multiply them, and inject them into a donor,” she said. “Now it’s a matter of perfecting the specifics – getting the cycle, the angle of growth, the texture, and the color right so the induced hair looks natural.”
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