Boosting Hair Follicle Regeneration
August 2013
in “
Nature Reviews Drug Discovery
”
TLDR A protein called FGF9 helps regenerate hair follicles in mice after skin damage, and increasing FGF9 could potentially help human hair growth.
The study conducted 10 years ago demonstrated that fibroblast growth factor 9 (FGF9) is responsible for the regeneration of hair follicles after skin wounding in mice. The process involves FGF9 produced by γδ T cells activating WNT in wound fibroblasts, which then express FGF9, further amplifying WNT activity in the wound dermis during skin regeneration. The lack of dermal γδ T cells in humans could explain their inability to regenerate hair. The study found that overexpression of FGF9 increased the number of neogenic hair follicles in mice, suggesting that targeting FGF9 might induce hair follicle regeneration in humans.
