Approved Drugs Promise New Hair Growth

After testing the drug on human hair follicles it had the same effect – news which will no doubt thrill thousands of follicly-challenged people in Britain.

Hair loss treatment is not easy, especially in case of men who have lost a few of their scalp hair with age. They further found the drugs affected hair follicles directly. In contrast, the new topical treatments inhibit JAK-STAT signaling, a pathway involving Janus kinases that triggers cells to begin transcribing DNA or undertake other activity. This will promote the trapped hair follicles in resting state to restore itself.

The research team noted that the study should be considered as the first step towards cure for male pattern baldness. However, the study has been conducted only on lab mice at the moment. The research boosts the chance that drugs referred to as JAK inhibitors could be employed to restore hair regrowth in multiple types of hair thinning for example that caused by hair loss, and extra types that occur when hair hair follicles are held in a resting condition.

“What we have found is promising, though we have not yet shown it is effective for male pattern baldness”, said one of the researchers Angela Christiano from Columbia University Medical Centre in the US. One is approved for treatment of blood diseases (ruxolitinib) and the other for rheumatoid arthritis (tofacitinib).

Columbia University has filed patent applications relating to the discoveries reported in this paper, which are being commercialized through Vixen Pharmaceuticals, Inc., of which Dr. Christiano is a founder.

The Columbia team got similar results when they tested the compounds on human skin grafted onto mice. JAK, the compound that the drugs suppress, puts hairs into a “resting” stage.

Christiano and her colleagues serendipitously discovered the effect of JAK inhibitors on hair follicles when they were studying a type of hair loss known as alopecia areata, caused by an autoimmune attack on the hair follicles. It’s too early to know how the treatment would be formulated, how much a person would need to use, or what it would cost.

“More work needs to be done to test formulations of JAK inhibitors specially made for the scalp to determine whether they can induce hair growth in humans”, she said.

In the meantime, two JAK inhibitors that have FDA approval are undergoing clinical trials for the treatment of alopecia areata as well as for plaque psoriasis, an inflammatory skin disorder. So there is huge possibility now that the JAK drug can be used for human too to restore hair growth. This suggested JAK inhibitors might have a direct effect on the hair follicles in addition to inhibiting the immune attack.

They analyzed normal mouse hair follicles and discovered that the JAK inhibitors were suddenly waking up resting hair follicles out of the dormant stage of their growth cycles by activating their regular reawakening process. Follicles go through active and dormant phases, only producing hair when it is active.