Systems Pharmacology Identifies Dermal Papilla-Specific Transcriptomic Reversal of Androgenetic Alopecia by Lithium-Zinc Pathway Convergence

The study identifies a significant transcriptomic reversal of androgenetic alopecia through the convergence of lithium and zinc pathways, specifically targeting dermal papilla (DP) cells. The combination of lithium and zinc demonstrated statistically significant results across three datasets, with z-scores of 3.43, 3.99, and 9.79, and empirical p-values indicating strong effects. The lithium–zinc combination ranked in the 99.5th percentile in DP-specific datasets, and cross-dataset meta-analysis confirmed the consistency of these findings. The strongest signal was observed in the DP-enriched model, supporting the hypothesis that the treatment targets DP-specific pathways. Robustness of the results was confirmed through leave-10%-out and bootstrap analyses, indicating a distributed and non-fragile rescue signal.