Scientists have discovered how immune cells could be used to cure hair loss.
The regulatory T-cells, known as ‘Tregs’, are all over human body, they control inflammation in the body.
Scientists from the University of California at San Francisco showed how Tregs in the skin send out signals that stimulate hair follicles to regenerate in mice.
Hair follicles are recycling always, Tregs are important for this process, if this immune system is weak or dead, hair will not grow.
A protein called KROX20 that is associated with nerve development, turned on in skin cells that become the hair shaft. The hair cells then produced a protein known as stem cell factor SCF
which is essential for hair pigmentation.
When scientists removed the SCF gene in the hair progenitor cells in mice, their hair turned white. When they removed the KROX20-producing cells, no hair grew and the mice became bald.